Semiconductor Lithography Patents: Top Companies & Filing Trends 2026
- 51.2% concentration. The five leading assignees hold 3,222 of the 6,298 records in scope — filing here means filing into occupied ground.
- Filings down 55% since the last complete peak. 2021's 451 filings fell to 202 by 2024, the last year the dataset treats as complete.
- Photolithography is the second-largest class, not the largest. G03F carries 29.7% of records against H01L's 52.2%, meaning device-structure claims outweigh optical-process claims two to one.
Filing growth compares 2021 (451 records) with 2024 (202) — 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 6,298 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the dataset covers
This landscape draws on 6,298 published records matched against lithography-specific terms combined with core semiconductor-process language — transistor structure, wafer substrate, mask layer, circuit pattern. The coverage window runs from 2015 through the 2026-08-31 cut-off, though publication lag means the final one to two years are always undercounted at the point of capture. Family-level counting is used throughout the assignee ranking, which neutralises the effect of continuation filings and multi-jurisdiction duplicates that would otherwise inflate any single applicant’s apparent share.
The receiving-office mix is heavily weighted toward the United States, with the EPO, WIPO's PCT route, the UK, Australia and Japan making up the rest of the recorded filing activity. That skew matters for freedom-to-operate work: a clearance search limited to one jurisdiction will miss most of the corpus.
Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 6,298-record corpus: how filing volume has moved year over year, and how records distribute across IPC subclasses. Because a single record can carry several classes, the technology shares below sum to well over 100% — each is a share of all records, not of a fixed pool.
Filing volume has pulled back from its 2018 peak
Filings peaked at 457 in 2018 and climbed again to 451 in 2021 before falling to 202 by 2024, a 55% decline over that three-year span — the most recent complete-year comparison the dataset supports. Years after 2024 are still filling in under the roughly 18-month publication lag, so the tail of the chart should be read as incomplete rather than as evidence of continued decline.
Device structure claims outweigh pure optical-process claims
H01L (semiconductor devices) touches 52.2% of records, well ahead of G03F (photolithography and photomechanics) at 29.7%. The presence of G06F (digital data processing) at 9.7% and G11C (memories) at 4.5% signals that a meaningful slice of this corpus sits at the intersection of lithographic process and downstream circuit or memory design, not in the optics alone.
Shares are the percentage of the 6,298 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Semiconductor Lithography Patent Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about semiconductor lithography patent landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe patents shaping this field
US20160274470A1 — Wafer lithography equipment
Wafer lithography equipment transferring a circuit pattern onto a wafer, measuring the resulting dimension, and computing the difference between a modelled dimension (from an approximate response surface function fed by exposure amount and focus distance) and the measured dimension — then summing that difference across multiple conditions to characterise process drift.Filed by Kioxia Corporation, 2016-09-22.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US4509852A | Apparatus for the photolithographic manufacture of integrated circuit elements | 2,267 |
| 2 | US4346164A | Photolithographic method for the manufacture of integrated circuits | 1,879 |
| 3 | US20030123040A1 | Optical spot grid array printer | 795 |
| 4 | WO2004095135A2 | Optical arrangement of autofocus elements for use with immersion lithography | 611 |
| 5 | US5576143A | Light-sensitive composition | 558 |
| 6 | US20160085003A1 | Materials, components, and methods for use with extreme ultraviolet radiation in lithography and other applic… | 434 |
| 7 | US6673638B1 | Method and apparatus for the production of process sensitive lithographic features | 403 |
| 8 | US7231628B2 | Method and system for context-specific mask inspection | 366 |
| 9 | US6042997A | Copolymers and photoresist compositions comprising copolymer resin binder component | 360 |
| 10 | US20050237501A1 | Wafer cell for immersion lithography | 355 |
Citation counts inside a searched corpus favour older filings — read them as a measure of influence on later filers, not as a ranking of current commercial relevance.
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Three findings stand out once the ranking, trend and classification data are read together.
The top of the field is dense, the rest is a long tail
Just over half of all records in scope sit with five assignees, and the ranked list extends to 100 companies before the data ends. A new entrant filing broad device-structure or exposure-control claims is filing directly into ground the leaders have already covered many times over.
Volume has pulled back from its 2021 level
The three-year decline to 2024 is real, but it should not be read past the data: 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete under normal publication lag, so a further slide is not yet confirmed by the record.
Optical-process claims are outnumbered by device-structure claims
Photolithography-specific classification (G03F) trails general semiconductor-device classification (H01L) by a wide margin, and classes touching digital processing and memory design each carry single-digit-to-low-teens shares — evidence that lithography patenting increasingly reaches into adjacent circuit and memory claims rather than staying confined to optical method.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to semiconductor lithography patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
The assignee landscape
The ranking covers 100 companies drawn from the full 6,298-record corpus. The leader alone accounts for 2,447 records; by the tenth position, volume has fallen to 87 — a steep drop-off that marks where the long tail begins.
One filer sits well above the rest of the field
The leading assignee's count exceeds the combined fifth-through-tenth positions, a gap wide enough that its portfolio functions as a default prior-art check for any new device-structure or process-control claim in this space.
The drop from fifth to tenth is gradual, not a cliff
Unlike the gap below the leader, positions five through ten decline steadily, suggesting an active group of mid-sized filers rather than a sharp cut-off — worth monitoring individually rather than dismissing as background noise.
Co-assignee filing is concentrated in one corporate family
The ten identified co-assignee pairs cluster heavily around a single organisation's regional entities, indicating internal cross-jurisdiction filing coordination rather than genuine third-party joint development.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) | 5 | -83% |
| ASML Netherlands B.V. | 4 | -33% |
| Zamtec | 0 | — |
| Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (TSMC) | 0 | -100% |
| Texas Instruments Inc. | 0 | — |
| Silverbrook Research | 0 | — |
| Shin-Etsu Chemical Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Nikon Corporation | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The figures above establish the shape of the field. Turning that shape into a filing or freedom-to-operate decision requires drilling into specific claims and specific assignees.
Map claims against a specific process step
The device-structure and photolithography classes overlap heavily; isolating which claims in a target sub-area actually block a planned process requires reading full claim sets, not just IPC tags.
Explore in Patsnap Eureka →Track the mid-field assignees, not just the leader
The steady decline from fifth to tenth place suggests several companies are worth watching individually rather than folding into a single 'rest of field' bucket.
Explore in Patsnap Eureka →Re-check the 2025–2026 trend once it settles
Publication lag means the most recent years understate real filing activity; revisit the trend line after it has had time to fill in before drawing conclusions about a continued slowdown.
Explore in Patsnap Eureka →Common questions about the semiconductor lithography patent landscape
One assignee leads the ranked field with 2,447 of the 6,298 records in scope, well ahead of the rest of the field — the fifth-ranked company holds 114 and the tenth holds 87. The top five combined account for 51.2% of all records, so filing strategy in this space has to account for a small number of very large portfolios before considering the long tail of 100 ranked companies. Because the ranking counts patent families rather than raw publications, this concentration reflects genuine filing breadth rather than an artefact of continuation filings.
Filing volume peaked at 457 records in 2018 and rose again to 451 in 2021, then fell to 202 by 2024 — a 55% decline over that span, which is the most recent period the dataset treats as complete. Years from 2025 onward are still understated because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so it is too early to call the trend a continued slowdown. The honest read is a clear pullback through 2024 with an open question about what follows.
H01L covers semiconductor devices broadly and appears on 52.2% of the 6,298 records, while G03F covers photolithography and photomechanics specifically and appears on 29.7%. A record can carry both, so these are not mutually exclusive buckets — the gap indicates that most lithography-related filings ultimately claim device structure or outcome rather than staying confined to the optical process itself. Classes touching digital data processing and memory design also appear at meaningful but smaller shares, pointing to filings that bridge lithographic process and downstream circuit design.
The steepest concentration sits in the classes with the largest shares — H01L and G03F — where the leading assignees have filed for years, so broad claims there face dense prior art. Narrower branches such as response-surface process-drift modelling, immersion-lithography focus correction, and wafer-level dimension calculation show up in representative filings but have not accumulated the same density of leading-assignee coverage. Recent-year momentum figures showing declines across several major assignees also suggest some of these narrower branches may be worth a fresh look rather than assuming they are closed.
The United States receives the largest share of filings in this corpus at 4,457 records, followed by the European Patent Office at 550 and the WIPO PCT route at 545. The United Kingdom, Australia and Japan each show smaller but non-trivial volumes. A clearance or freedom-to-operate search restricted to a single office — particularly one outside the US — will miss the majority of the recorded activity in this field.
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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.