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Run your analysis now →https://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/rd-blog/system-firmware-and-secure-boot-patent-landscape/ · Patsnap · data cut-off 2026-07-31 · downloaded from the live page
Patent Landscape · Computing ArchitectureSystem Firmware and Secure Boot Patents: Who Holds the Claims
- Filing has cooled from its 2023 peak. 91 families in 2023 gave way to a decline through 2026, with the largest tracked assignees showing 0 filings in the latest year and Intel and Huawei both down 100% year-on-year.
- The field is firmware-and-security by design, not by drift. 989 of 989 records sit in G06F, but 217 also touch H04L, showing secure boot claims are routinely paired with transmission-layer protocol work rather than filed as pure firmware.
- The US dominates filing venue by a wide margin. 532 of the tracked records were filed at the USPTO against 149 in China and 101 at the EPO, concentrating litigation and freedom-to-operate risk in one jurisdiction.
989
Published Records
36%
Top-5 Share of All Records
-3%
Filing Growth 2021→2024
US
Leading Jurisdiction
Filing growth compares 2021 (62 records) with 2024 (60) — 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 989 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
Published byPatsnap Research··8 min readSourced from Patsnap Eureka
Overview
What this landscape covers
This dataset tracks 989 patent families filed between 2015 and mid-2026 that combine system or BIOS firmware with secure boot, root-of-trust, boot-integrity or recovery-mechanism claims under UEFI-adjacent IPC classes. The scope is deliberately narrow: it isolates firmware that verifies or restores its own integrity at boot time, not general operating-system security or hardware trust anchors in isolation. Publication lags filing by roughly eighteen months, so the apparent drop-off in the most recent year overstates the actual slowdown in filing activity.
Coverage spans six major receiving offices, with the United States, China and Europe accounting for the large majority of filings. The technology composition shows firmware claims are rarely filed alone: a substantial minority also cite digital-information-transmission art, reflecting how secure boot chains now extend into network-delivered firmware updates.
Filing activity by year, 2017-2026
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee ranking and totals. Derived from a Patsnap search on System Firmware and Secure Boot covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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Data
Filing trends and technology mix
The filing curve and IPC composition together describe a field that expanded through the early 2020s and has since plateaued, with claim activity concentrated overwhelmingly in core digital-data-processing art.
A peak year followed by a flat-to-declining trend
Filings rose from 90 in 2017 to a peak of 91 in 2023, with the 2022 midpoint at 71 confirming genuine growth rather than noise. The pullback since then, visible even before accounting for publication lag, suggests the core secure-boot claim space is now well-occupied by incumbents rather than open to easy new filings.
Firmware claims paired with transmission-layer art
All 989 records sit in G06F, but 217 also carry H04L classification, and smaller counts touch G11C memory and H04W wireless art. This pairing pattern shows secure boot patenting has moved beyond static BIOS verification into claims that cover firmware delivered and verified over a network.
Shares are the percentage of the 989 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 System Firmware and Secure Boot covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.
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Representative and most-cited filings
Representative filing
US12210625B2 — System to enable secure boot from expired certificate via digital signature proxy
LENOVO ENTERPRISE SOLUTIONS (SINGAPORE) PTE LTD.
A method for allowing a firmware update when a digital certificate for a firmware update image is expired includes initiating a firmware update of a computing device and determining, using a secure boot process, that a firmware update image has an expired digital certificate. The firmware update image is stored in nonvolatile memory accessible to a service processor and to a host processor of the computing device. The method includes determining that the firmware update image and an image of firmware with code of the secure boot process were digitally signed by a same entity and overriding the secure boot process to allow execution of the firmware update image in response to determining that this condition holds.Filed by Lenovo Enterprise Solutions (Singapore); granted January 2025. It addresses a practical failure mode — certificate expiry blocking a legitimate firmware update — rather than a new cryptographic primitive.
Most-cited records in this dataset
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20140351571A1 | Out of band management of basic input/output system secure boot variables | 261 |
| 2 | US20030074548A1 | Method and system for tracking a secure boot in a trusted computing environment | 200 |
| 3 | US20130031374A1 | Firmware-based trusted platform module for arm processor architectures and trustzone security extensions | 189 |
| 4 | US20110131447A1 | Automated modular and secure boot firmware update | 172 |
| 5 | US20080126779A1 | Methods and apparatus to perform secure boot | 171 |
| 6 | US9230112B1 | Secured booting of a field programmable system-on-chip including authentication of a first stage boot loader … | 162 |
| 7 | US20090249053A1 | Method and apparatus for sequential hypervisor invocation | 142 |
| 8 | US20150012737A1 | Secure Boot for Unsecure Processors | 138 |
| 9 | US20180004953A1 | Secure industrial control platform | 116 |
| 10 | US20040076043A1 | Reliable and secure updating and recovery of firmware from a mass storage device | 107 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had more time to accumulate citations within the searched corpus; treat them as a measure of influence on subsequent filers, not of current commercial 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 System Firmware and Secure Boot covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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What the numbers mean for strategy
Three patterns stand out once the raw counts are read against filing dates and citation behaviour: a cooling market, a jurisdictional concentration, and a shift toward network-delivered firmware.
Filing momentum
91 in 2023 → 8 in 2026
peak year vs. latest partial year
The claim space has stopped expanding
Filings peaked in 2023 and every major tracked assignee shows zero filings in the latest year, with Intel and Huawei each down 100% year-on-year. Some of this is publication lag, but the length and breadth of the pullback across nearly every top assignee suggests the core secure-boot mechanisms are now settled rather than still being staked out.
Read against the 2022 midpoint of 71, this is a genuine plateau, not a one-year dip.
Venue concentration
532 US filings
of 989 total records
Freedom-to-operate risk sits mostly in one jurisdiction
More than half of all tracked filings went to the USPTO, with China and the EPO a distant second and third. Anyone clearing a new firmware-security product for the US market is working against the densest and best-litigated part of this landscape; clearance in China or Europe faces a comparatively thinner prior-art base.
Taiwan and Japan filings are smaller but concentrated among device and component makers rather than platform vendors.
Technology pairing
217 records also in H04L
alongside 989 in G06F
Secure boot has merged with update transport
Nearly a quarter of the dataset pairs firmware/secure-boot claims with digital-information-transmission classification. This reflects a real architectural shift: boot integrity checks increasingly govern firmware pulled over a network connection, not just firmware already resident on a device.
Smaller counts in G11C and H04W show memory and wireless-specific implementations remain a minority niche.
Collaboration
10 co-assignee pairs
across the full dataset
Cross-filing is rare and mostly academic-industry
Co-assigned filings are uncommon in this dataset, and the strongest pairing links a major processor vendor with a university research group, alongside a software vendor paired with an individual inventor. This points to a field where most substantive IP is built and held internally rather than through joint filing programmes.
Absence of dense co-filing networks makes single-assignee prior art the primary clearance concern.
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Source: Patsnap Eureka. Co-assignee relationships and derived observations. Derived from a Patsnap search on System Firmware and Secure Boot covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Players
Who holds the claims, and where they have stopped filing
The named assignee list is dominated by platform and OEM vendors — the companies that ship the firmware stack itself — with every one of the largest showing no filings in the most recent tracked year.
Platform incumbents
-100% YoY
Intel and Huawei, latest year
The largest holders have gone quiet
Intel, Microsoft, Dell, HP, IBM and Huawei anchor the top of the assignee ranking, and every one of them recorded zero filings in the latest tracked year, with Intel and Huawei explicitly down 100% year-on-year. This is consistent with a maturing claim space where the foundational mechanisms are already covered.
New entrants should expect to design around, not build atop, this incumbent base.
Recent grant activity
US12210625B2, Jan 2025
Lenovo Enterprise Solutions
OEMs still patent narrow operational fixes
Even as the largest platform vendors slow down, OEM-side assignees continue to secure grants addressing specific operational failure modes — such as certificate expiry blocking a legitimate update. These are narrower, more defensible claims than the broad boot-integrity patents filed a decade earlier.
This pattern favours incremental filings over attempts at broad new primitives.
Academic-industry links
2 shared filings each
top co-assignee pairs
A thin but real research bridge
The strongest co-assignee relationships pair a major processor vendor with a university research group, suggesting some secure-boot cryptographic work still originates in sponsored academic research before being filed jointly or licensed onward.
Ten total co-assignee pairs across the dataset confirms this is a minor but persistent channel.
Recent-year filing momentum by assignee
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Dell Products L.P. | 0 | — |
| Intel Corporation | 0 | -100% |
| Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC | 0 | — |
| Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. | 0 | — |
| Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. | 0 | -100% |
| International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) | 0 | — |
| Lenovo (Singapore) Pte. Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Quanta Computer Inc. | 0 | — |
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee-level momentum. Derived from a Patsnap search on System Firmware and Secure Boot covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. 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 a settled core and a thinner set of adjacent openings. The next step is usually to test a specific claim idea against this prior art rather than read further summary.
Check a draft claim against this corpus
Run a specific claim concept — such as certificate-override logic or network-delivered attestation — against the 989 tracked families to see how close existing filings sit before drafting.
Explore in EurekaTrack the incumbents that have gone quiet
Set up ongoing monitoring on the assignees showing zero recent filings, since a return to filing activity from any of them would signal a shift back toward active claim-staking.
Set up monitoring in EurekaSource: Patsnap Eureka. Forward-looking reading of the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on System Firmware and Secure Boot covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
FAQ
Common questions about this landscape
The assignee ranking in this dataset is led by major platform and OEM vendors including Intel, Microsoft, Dell, HP, IBM and Huawei, reflecting the fact that these companies control the firmware stacks that secure boot protects. Notably, every one of these top holders shows zero filings in the most recent tracked year, with Intel and Huawei both down 100% year-on-year. This suggests the largest incumbents consider their core positions already secured rather than still expanding them.
No, filing activity peaked at 91 families in 2023 and has declined since, with the 2022 midpoint of 71 confirming this was a real growth curve rather than noise around a flat trend. Some of the apparent 2025-2026 drop reflects normal publication lag of roughly eighteen months, but the breadth of the pullback across nearly every major assignee points to a genuine plateau in new filing, not just a reporting artefact.
The United States accounts for 532 of the 989 tracked filings, making it by far the densest and highest-risk jurisdiction for freedom-to-operate clearance. China follows with 149 filings and Europe with 101, both offering comparatively thinner prior art. Companies planning a US launch of firmware-security features should budget more clearance time and cost than for a China- or Europe-first release.
US12210625B2, assigned to Lenovo Enterprise Solutions (Singapore), covers a method for allowing a firmware update to proceed when its digital certificate has expired, provided the update image and the existing boot firmware were signed by the same entity, by overriding the secure boot process under that condition. It is a narrow operational fix rather than a broad new cryptographic primitive, addressing the practical failure case where certificate expiry would otherwise block a legitimate, trusted update. Anyone building certificate-lifecycle handling into a secure boot chain should review this claim specifically rather than assume it is covered by older, broader boot-integrity patents.
Based on the IPC composition, areas with thinner filing density relative to the core secure-boot mechanisms include certificate-expiry override handling, service-processor-mediated firmware recovery, and attestation of firmware delivered over wireless channels, since only small counts of records touch G06N, H04W and related classes. These branches sit adjacent to the dense core rather than replacing it, so a workable filing strategy is usually to claim a specific operational mechanism in one of these areas rather than attempt a broad new boot-integrity primitive.
Answers are grounded in the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on System Firmware and Secure Boot covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. 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.