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Run your analysis now →https://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/rd-blog/software-architecture-patent-landscape-patent-landscape/ · Patsnap · data cut-off 2026-08-31 · downloaded from the live page
Patent Landscape · Software ArchitectureSoftware Architecture Patents: Filing Trends and the Companies Behind Them
- Filings peaked in 2021 at 1,279 and dropped -29% to 911 by 2024, the last year the data can be treated as complete.
- The top 10 assignees hold 30.7% of all 37,028 records in scope, with the leader alone accounting for 2,105 — concentration sits at the top, then thins fast.
- G06F carries 31.2% of all records while AI-adjacent classes like G06N (4.3%) and G06T (4.0%) are present but still comparatively small footprints.
37K
Published Records
21%
Top-5 Share of All Records
-29%
Filing Growth 2021→2024
US
Leading Jurisdiction
Filing growth compares 2021 (1,279 records) with 2024 (911) — 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 37,028 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
Published byPatsnap Research··7 min readSourced from Patsnap Eureka
Overview
What the data covers
This landscape covers 37,028 published records filed or published between 2015 and the 2026 data cut-off, drawn from documents that combine software architecture terminology — software design architecture, application architecture — with implementation-level concepts such as source code, software modules, test cases, deployment pipelines, service orchestration and resource scheduling. That pairing narrows the corpus to filings that describe how software systems are structured and built, rather than any invention that merely mentions software in passing.
Filing activity across the period is uneven rather than steadily rising: it climbs to a peak year and then eases back, which matters for anyone trying to time a filing strategy or judge whether a sub-area is still attracting fresh claims.
Filing activity and technology composition, 2015–2026
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee ranking and totals. Derived from a Patsnap search on Software Architecture Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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The numbers
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 37,028-record corpus: how filing volume moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the largest share of records.
Filings rose to a 2021 peak, then eased
Volume moved from 798 in 2017 to a peak of 1,279 in 2021, then declined to 911 by 2024 — a -29% move over that three-year span. 2025 and 2026 figures are still filling in as publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the most recent years understate real activity and should not be read as a continued decline on their own.
G06F dominates; classification is broad-based
G06F (electric digital data processing) appears on 31.2% of all 37,028 records, more than double the next class, H04L (digital information transmission) at 13.6%. Business-process classification G06Q (6.2%), wireless networking H04W (5.2%) and AI-model computing G06N (4.3%) each carry a meaningful but distinctly smaller share, and because records can carry multiple classes these shares sum to well over 100%.
Shares are the percentage of the 37,028 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Software Architecture Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.
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The most-cited records in this space
Representative filing
US10782936B1 — Programming migration system and methods
ARCHITECTURE TECHNOLOGY CORPORATION
A computer-implemented method for migrating a monolithic legacy software system to a well-defined modular target software architecture. The approach builds an abstract syntax tree from the legacy source code, uses it to determine code flow and to flag coding violations and coding smells, identifies architecture issues from that flow, and schedules tasks that transform the legacy system into the target architecture.Filed by Architecture Technology Corporation, published 2020-09-22.
Highest-citation records in the corpus
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5892900A | Systems and methods for secure transaction management and electronic rights protection | 6,074 |
| 2 | US20080120129A1 | Consistent set of interfaces derived from a business object model | 2,467 |
| 3 | US6574635B2 | Application instantiation based upon attributes and values stored in a meta data repository, including tierin… | 2,446 |
| 4 | US20030120675A1 | Application instantiation based upon attributes and values stored in a meta data repository, including tierin… | 2,373 |
| 5 | US6519571B1 | Dynamic customer profile management | 2,371 |
| 6 | US6571282B1 | Block-based communication in a communication services patterns environment | 2,353 |
| 7 | US6032202A | Home audio/video network with two level device control | 2,092 |
| 8 | US5982891A | Systems and methods for secure transaction management and electronic rights protection | 1,903 |
| 9 | US20070087756A1 | Multifactorial optimization system and method | 1,866 |
| 10 | US6601233B1 | Business components framework | 1,859 |
Citation counts inside a searched corpus favour older records that have had more years to accumulate references — treat them as a signal of influence on the field, not a ranking of current relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Citation counts and representative records. Derived from a Patsnap search on Software Architecture Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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What the filing pattern signals
Reading volume, concentration and classification together points to where claim space is occupied and where it is thinner.
Concentration
21.1% of 37,028
held by top 5 assignees
A short list of large filers, then a long tail
The top 5 assignees together account for 21.1% of all 37,028 records, and the top 10 for 30.7%. The leader alone holds 2,105 records against a tenth-place figure of 308 — concentration is real at the very top but drops off quickly, leaving most of the corpus to entities outside the ranked group.
Ranking covers 100 companies, the full set the data endpoint returns.
Momentum
-29% (2021→2024)
filing change, peak to latest complete year
Volume has eased from its 2021 peak
Filings grew from 798 in 2017 to a peak of 1,279 in 2021, then fell to 911 by 2024, a -29% move over that span. Several of the largest historical filers show sharp year-over-year drops in the most recent year, though publication lag means the newest years are still incomplete.
2024 is the most recent year treated as complete.
Composition
31.2% G06F
share of all 37,028 records
Core data-processing claims dominate classification
G06F carries the largest share of records by a wide margin, with H04L a distant second at 13.6%. AI-adjacent classes — G06N and G06T — sit in the 4% range each, present but far from dominant, which suggests architecture-specific AI claims are still a comparatively small slice of the corpus.
Shares sum above 100% because records can carry multiple IPC classes.
Collaboration
10 co-assignee pairs
identified in the corpus
Co-filing is rare and concentrated around a few institutions
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear in the dataset, with the strongest pairings linking a corporate filer to a university research partner. Co-invention is the exception here, not the norm, which means most claim territory is being built and defended by single entities rather than jointly.
Strongest pair recorded 16 shared filings.
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Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to software architecture patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Co-assignee relationships and derived observations. Derived from a Patsnap search on Software Architecture Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Players
Who is filing, and how their momentum is shifting
The ranked leaders sit atop a corpus where recent-year activity has slowed sharply for several of the largest historical filers, even accounting for publication lag.
Leader
2,105 records
top-ranked assignee
One filer holds a clear lead
The top-ranked assignee's 2,105 records sit well above fifth place at 1,317 and tenth place at 308, meaning the gap from first to fifth is itself larger than the gap from fifth to tenth — a steep drop concentrated near the very top.
Figures counted in records, the full ranked set.
Momentum
-82% to -100% YoY
latest-year change among large historical filers
Several major filers show sharp recent-year drops
Large historical assignees show year-over-year declines ranging from -80% to -100% in the latest year, with some recording zero filings. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, part of this drop is an artefact of incomplete recent data rather than a confirmed pullback.
Latest-year counts are provisional pending further publication.
Long tail
100 ranked companies
full ranking returned
Beyond the leaders, filing is dispersed
Below the top 10, the ranking spreads across many more assignees at much lower volumes each, consistent with a field where architecture-related claims are filed broadly across the industry rather than owned by a handful of specialists.
Ranking is the complete set the data endpoint returns, not a curated top list.
Recent-year filing momentum by assignee
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. | 10 | -82% |
| Toyota Research Institute, Inc. | 3 | -80% |
| Qualcomm Incorporated | 1 | -93% |
| Intel Corporation | 0 | -100% |
| Apple Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| International Business Machines Corporation | 0 | — |
| SAP SE | 0 | -100% |
| Microsoft Corporation | 0 | — |
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee-level momentum. Derived from a Patsnap search on Software Architecture Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
What's next
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, whitespace filing, or tracking a competitor.
Check freedom-to-operate against the most-cited records
The highest-citation documents in this corpus, several dating to the early 2000s on business-object and metadata-repository architecture, still shape claim scope in adjacent filings today.
Explore the citation network →Test a claim against the under-claimed branches
Sub-areas like deployment pipeline orchestration and architecture drift detection show thinner filing density than core G06F claim space, which may leave room for a narrowly drafted first claim.
Draft and stress-test a claim →Track momentum among the largest filers
Sharp year-over-year drops among several historical leaders are worth watching for confirmation once 2025-2026 publications catch up, rather than treated as settled today.
Monitor assignee activity →Source: Patsnap Eureka. Forward-looking reading of the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Software Architecture Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
FAQ
Common questions about software architecture patents
This landscape identifies 37,028 published records between 2015 and the 2026 data cut-off that combine software architecture terminology with implementation concepts such as source code, deployment pipelines and service orchestration. Filing volume rose from 798 in 2017 to a peak of 1,279 in 2021, then eased to 911 by 2024, the most recent year that can be treated as complete. Later years are still filling in because publication typically lags actual filing by around 18 months.
The ranking covers 100 assignees, with the leading company holding 2,105 records against 1,317 at fifth place and 308 at tenth. The top 5 assignees together account for 21.1% of all 37,028 records in scope, and the top 10 for 30.7%, so concentration is meaningful at the very top but falls off quickly across the rest of the ranking. Most of the corpus sits outside these ranked leaders, spread across many smaller filers.
Filings grew through the late 2010s to a peak of 1,279 in 2021, then declined to 911 by 2024, a -29% move over that three-year span. This should not be read as a permanent slowdown: 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete because of the roughly 18-month publication lag, and several of the largest recent-year drops among individual assignees may partly reflect that same lag rather than a real pullback.
G06F, electric digital data processing, appears on 31.2% of all 37,028 records, by far the largest single class. H04L, digital information transmission, follows at 13.6%, with G06Q, H04W, G06N and G06T each in the mid-single digits. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC classes, these shares add up to more than 100%, and they should be read as relative weight rather than as parts of a whole.
Sub-areas such as architecture-aware test case generation, deployment pipeline orchestration across hybrid cloud, and architecture drift detection from source repositories show comparatively thinner filing density than the dominant G06F and H04L classes. That does not mean these areas are undiscovered, but claim space there is less occupied, which can make a narrowly drafted first claim easier to defend. Any filing decision should still be checked against the specific most-cited prior art in the relevant sub-class.
Answers are grounded in the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Software Architecture Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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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.