Reticle & Wafer Carrier Cleanliness Patents: Top Companies 2026
Reticle and Wafer Carrier Cleanliness Patents: Who Leads and Where the Gaps Sit
Concentrated at the top. the five leading assignees together hold 53.2% of all 333 records in scope, and the leading ten hold 72.4%. Filings rose from zero in 2017 to a peak of 23 in 2022, then settled back to 17 in 2024 — the same level as 2021, for a measured 0% change across that three-year span. Treat 2025 and 2026 figures as still filling in rather than as a genuine slowdown.
- 1TOKYO ELECTRON LTD51
- 2APPLIED MATERIALS INC39
- 3CANON KK31
- 4FEI CO29
- 5ASML NETHERLANDS BV27
See the full reticle and wafer carrier cleanliness analysis in Eureka
- The complete ranking, not just the top five
- Every IPC branch with its share of the corpus
- The most-cited records, and where claim space is still thin
Common questions on this landscape
Who holds the most patents on reticle pod and wafer carrier cleanliness?
The dataset ranks 94 companies by record count, with the leading assignee holding 51 of the 333 records in scope. The top five together account for 53.2% of all records, and the top ten reach 72.4%, which marks this as a leader-and-followers field rather than an evenly split market. Beyond the leading names, a long tail of assignees hold only a handful of filings each, so competitive attention should focus on the leading group first.
Is patent filing in this area growing or slowing down?
Filing activity peaked at 23 records in 2022 and had returned to 17 by 2024, matching the 2021 level for a flat 0% change across that three-year span. Figures for 2025 and 2026 are still incomplete because publication typically lags filing by around eighteen months, so they should not be read as a decline. The honest read is a plateau after a 2022 spike, not sustained growth or contraction.
What patent classes cover wafer carrier and reticle pod cleanliness technology?
H01L (semiconductor devices) appears in 54.4% of the 333 records and H10P in 40.8%, showing that most cleanliness claims are drafted as features of device or process patents. G03F, covering photolithography and photomechanics, appears in 22.5% of records, reflecting the close tie between reticle handling and exposure tooling. Smaller classes such as B65D (containers and packaging) and B24B (grinding and polishing) each sit near 5%, marking narrower niches within the field.
Disclaimer. This analysis is based on Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent records and is provided for general information and reference only. Patent data carries inherent limitations — recent filings are under-counted because of publication lag, counts may be on a record or family basis, classification and applicant-name data may contain errors or duplicates, and the underlying search query defines the scope shown — so the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing here is an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Verify independently and review with qualified patent and legal professionals before acting on it.
Method: Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Reticle and Wafer Carrier Cleanliness covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish. Every share divides by all records in scope. Data: Patsnap Eureka. See the full landscape report.