Quantum Networking Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- Filing peaked in 2022 at 76 families, and has not returned to that level since — the field is consolidating rather than accelerating.
- H04B (transmission) appears in 262 of 358 families, well ahead of G06N (163), showing the claim base still sits mostly in physical-layer transport rather than quantum computing overlap.
- Momentum has stalled across the named leaders, with several top assignees, including a major US research lab, showing zero filings in the latest tracked year.
Filing growth compares 2021 (36 records) with 2024 (40) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 358 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the quantum networking patent record actually shows
The corpus tracked here covers 358 patent families filed against quantum repeater, quantum internet and quantum network search terms, narrowed to claims touching entanglement swapping, quantum memory nodes, entanglement distribution or quantum channel language, and classified under H04B10/70, H04L9/08 or G06N10. This is a hardware-and-protocol layer view of quantum networking, not a broad quantum computing search — the IPC gate excludes most pure qubit-processor filings.
Filing activity rose steadily through the late 2010s, peaked in 2022, and has since declined — publication lag means the final one to two years will always look thinner than they eventually turn out to be, but the shape from 2017 through the peak is a real signal of a field that filed hard once and has since gone quiet at the top.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 358 families: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim weight.
Filing trend, 2017–2026
Filings climbed from 16 in 2017 to a peak of 76 in 2022, then declined through the most recent years tracked. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the last one or two years understate true activity, but the drop-off from the 2022 peak is steep enough that it likely reflects a genuine slowdown in new filing rather than a lag artefact alone.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
H04B (general transmission) and H04L (digital information transmission) dominate, appearing in 262 and 183 families respectively, with G06N (AI-adjacent computing) close behind at 163 — a sign that quantum networking claims are being written as much through classical transmission and protocol language as through quantum-native classification. B82Y, G02B, G11C and H04J each appear in fewer than 40 families, marking the physical-layer optics, memory and multiplexing branches as comparatively thin.
Shares are the percentage of the 358 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Quantum Networking Technology Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about quantum networking technology landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited records in this corpus
Quantum communication system, quantum repeater apparatus, quantum repeater method, and computer program product
A quantum repeater apparatus performs an entanglement swapping (ES) process for sharing an EPR pair with another node, and performs an entanglement purification protocol (EPP) process with the node with which the EPR pair is shared. The quantum repeater apparatus selects, when performing a last EPP process, a classical channel different from at least one of a classical channel used for a last ES process and used for any one of ES processes that have been performed before the last ES process, and a classical channel used for any one of EPP processes that have been performed before.Filed by Toshiba, this record sits early in the field's timeline and its channel-selection approach to entanglement purification is one of the more specific procedural claims in the corpus.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20210105135A1 | Quantum network devices, systems, and methods | 116 |
| 2 | US20170338952A1 | Apparatus for quantum key distribution on a quantum network and method using the same | 99 |
| 3 | US20080258049A1 | Quantum repeater using atomic cascade transitions | 88 |
| 4 | US7889992B1 | Hybrid superconductor-optical quantum repeater | 79 |
| 5 | US20210103847A1 | Quantum repeater from quantum analog-digital interconverter | 62 |
| 6 | US20230376818A1 | High Density Fiber Optic Packaging for Cryogenic Applications | 44 |
| 7 | US20120148237A1 | Quantum Repeater And System And Method For Creating Extended Entanglements | 44 |
| 8 | US20080089696A1 | Quantum communication system, quantum repeater apparatus, quantum repeater method, and computer program produ… | 42 |
| 9 | US20170163415A1 | Systems and methods for quantum key generation | 31 |
| 10 | US20220269976A1 | Methods, systems, and apparatus for enabling and managing quantum networks | 30 |
Citation counts inside a searched corpus skew toward older filings that have had more time to accumulate citations — read them as a signal of influence on the field, not of current commercial weight.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three patterns stand out once volume, classification and momentum are read together.
Volume peaked and has not recovered
Annual filings rose from 16 in 2017 to a high of 76 in 2022, then fell back in the years since. That trajectory — rise, single peak, decline — is more consistent with a technology that had a defined land-grab window than one still in early growth.
Transport layer outweighs the AI-adjacent overlap
H04B families outnumber G06N families by a wide margin, meaning most claims are still anchored in transmission architecture — repeaters, channels, nodes — rather than in the computing/algorithmic layer that G06N10 represents.
The named leaders have gone quiet
Several of the most active historical filers, across both corporate and university assignees, show zero filings in the latest tracked year, including one with a -100% year-on-year swing. Leadership by cumulative count does not currently mean leadership in current activity.
Filing is concentrated in the US and China
The United States (113) and China (67) together account for the largest share of receiving-office activity, with WIPO PCT filings (45) suggesting a meaningful share of applicants are still pursuing multi-jurisdiction protection rather than filing domestically only.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to quantum networking technology landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gate sits
Ranking by cumulative family count and by recent momentum tell different stories in this dataset — several of the largest historical filers have gone quiet in the latest year, while co-assignee pairings point to where research partnerships are structured into the filing itself.
Corporate-academic pairing anchors the top of the table
The strongest co-assignee pair in the dataset, a large IT vendor filing jointly with a national information systems research institute, appears together on 22 families — by far the densest single collaboration link in the corpus, well ahead of the next pairs at 9 and 8.
Historical leaders are not current filers
Corporate names including a major IT vendor, a glass and optics manufacturer, and a UK quantum security specialist all show zero filings in the most recent year, alongside academic assignees such as a Dutch technical university and a US research university with a -100% year-on-year change.
Three-jurisdiction filing strategy dominates
The United States leads receiving-office volume, China is a close second, and WIPO PCT filings sit third — a pattern consistent with applicants pursuing both direct national protection in the two largest markets and international-phase flexibility elsewhere.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Hewlett Packard Development Company, LP | 0 | — |
| Corning Incorporated | 0 | — |
| National Institute of Informatics | 0 | — |
| ARQIT LTD | 0 | — |
| Delft University of Technology | 0 | — |
| University of Chicago | 0 | -100% |
| X Development LLC | 0 | — |
| Cisco Technology, Inc. | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, partnership scouting or claim drafting.
Check freedom-to-operate against the top-cited records
The five highest-cited filings, several from Toshiba and other early movers, define much of the entanglement swapping and repeater-architecture claim space. Any new filing in that area should be checked against these first.
Explore in EurekaTrack the assignees that have gone quiet
Zero recent-year filings from several top cumulative filers could mean a strategic pause, a shift to trade secrecy, or portfolio consolidation elsewhere. Monitoring their broader filing activity outside this IPC gate would clarify which.
Set up monitoring in EurekaDraft around the under-claimed branches
Quantum memory node fidelity and multiplexed entanglement distribution show comparatively thin filing density relative to the core repeater claims, suggesting room for narrowly scoped first filings.
Run a white space search in EurekaCommon questions about quantum networking patents
This dataset identifies 358 patent families published between 2015 and mid-2026 that match quantum repeater, quantum internet or quantum network language combined with entanglement swapping, quantum memory node, entanglement distribution or quantum channel claim terms, classified under H04B10/70, H04L9/08 or G06N10. Filing rose from 16 families in 2017 to a peak of 76 in 2022 before declining. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the most recent one or two years will always undercount eventual totals, so treat the tail end of the trend as provisional.
Cumulative filing counts and recent momentum diverge sharply in this dataset. Several of the assignees with the largest historical portfolios, including corporate IT vendors, an optics manufacturer, a UK quantum security firm and multiple universities, show zero filings in the latest tracked year. The strongest collaborative filing relationship in the corpus is a corporate-academic pairing that co-files on 22 families, well ahead of any other pair, which suggests that in this field durable filing volume has come more from sustained partnerships than from any single company acting alone.
A quantum repeater extends the range of quantum communication by using entanglement swapping and entanglement purification to relay quantum states across nodes without directly amplifying them, since quantum states cannot be cloned. It matters for patents because repeater architecture is the densest single claim area in this corpus — the most-cited record in the dataset, filed by Toshiba, covers exactly this entanglement swapping and purification process, and several other top-cited filings describe hybrid superconductor-optical or atomic-cascade repeater implementations. Anyone building repeater hardware should expect to navigate this cluster first.
Relative to the core repeater and entanglement-distribution claims, filing density is thinner in quantum memory node fidelity protocols, multiplexed entanglement distribution approaches that overlap with H04J classification, and static quantum memory storage overlapping G11C. These branches appear in the dataset's IPC composition at far lower counts than the dominant H04B and H04L subclasses, which points to room for narrowly scoped filings rather than crowded incremental claims. High filing density elsewhere means that claim space is occupied, not that it is technically exhausted, so a differentiated approach in a thin branch can still be viable.
The trend in this dataset shows a rise from 16 families in 2017 to a peak of 76 in 2022, followed by a decline through the most recent years. Part of that decline is a data artefact: publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so recent years are structurally undercounted. But the drop is steep enough, and consistent enough across multiple leading assignees showing zero recent filings, that it likely also reflects a genuine slowdown in new filing activity at the top of the field, possibly as early claim space around repeater and entanglement-swapping architectures became more settled.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.