Thin-Film Lithium Niobate Modulator Patents: Who Leads 2026
- 94.4% of records sit with five assignees. Top 5 combined account for 17 of the 18 records in scope — this is a field defined by a small set of filers, not a broad competitive race.
- Filing peaked in 2022 at 5 records, then fell. With momentum flat to zero across every ranked assignee in the latest year, the visible trend line understates what is still moving through publication lag.
- G02F carries two-thirds of the record set. 12 of 18 records touch optical control and modulation classification, with G02B optical elements a distant second at 7 of 18.
Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 18 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
A small, concentrated patent record around a specific device architecture
Thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) modulators are claimed around a narrow set of engineering problems: half-wave voltage reduction, travelling-wave electrode design, velocity matching between the RF and optical modes, and bias drift control. The dataset in scope holds 18 published records across a search window from 2015 through the 2026 cut-off, which is a small corpus by patent-landscape standards and reflects a technology still moving from bench demonstration to manufacturable device rather than a mass-market claims race.
Filing is concentrated: six assignees account for the entire ranked set, and five of them together hold 94.4% of all 18 records. The United States is the dominant receiving office by a wide margin, with PCT filings a distant second, which points to a field where applicants are protecting home-market and international-phase positions rather than filing broadly across many national offices yet.
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Filing trend and technology composition
The trend line and IPC breakdown below are drawn directly from the 18 records in scope. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the tail end of the trend — 2025 and especially 2026 — is undercounted and will fill in as more applications publish.
From a 2017 opening to a 2022 peak
Filings open the window at 3 records in 2017 and reach a peak of 5 in 2022, the highest single year in the dataset. The falloff toward 2026 (0 records) is consistent with publication lag rather than a real stop in activity; growth rate is not stated here because fewer than four complete post-lag years are available to compute one reliably.
G02F dominates; coating and semiconductor classes are marginal
G02F (optical control and modulation) appears on 66.7% of the 18 records, and G02B (optical elements and systems) on 38.9% — together they account for the great majority of claim activity. B05D (coating processes) and H01L (semiconductor devices) each sit at 5.6%, single-record footholds rather than established sub-fields; a record can carry more than one class, so these shares sum to more than 100%.
Shares are the percentage of the 18 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Thin-Film Lithium Niobate Modulators with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about thin-film lithium niobate modulators and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited records anchor the core device architecture
US20250390001A1 — Non-interferometric thin film lithium niobate modulator for data transmission
A non-interferometric thin film lithium niobate electro-optical modulator for data transmission including a laser configured to generate an input continuous wave light beam, and a modulator whose optical waveguide sits alongside coplanar transmission lines and DC bias conductors. The propagation constant of the waveguide is tuned by the RF data signal and DC bias voltage travelling on those lines, allowing the modulator to be set at quadrature by the DC bias and modulated by the RF signal.Filed by OPTILAB, LLC and published 2025-12-25 — recent enough that its influence on later filings has not yet had time to register in citation counts.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | WO2018031916A1 | Micro-machined thin film lithium niobate electro-optic devices | 92 |
| 2 | US20210255489A1 | Micro-machined thin film lithium niobate electro-optic devices | 18 |
| 3 | WO2002075444A1 | Thin film lithium niobate and electro-optic optical elements | 9 |
| 4 | US11598980B2 | Micro-machined thin film lithium niobate electro-optic devices | 6 |
| 5 | US20240255696A1 | Systems and methods for integration of thin film optical materials in silicon photonics | 3 |
| 6 | US20230384627A1 | Thin film lithium niobate optical device having an engineered substrate for heterogeneous integration | 2 |
| 7 | WO2023101856A1 | Systems and methods for integration of thin film optical materials in silicon photonics | 2 |
| 8 | US20250390001A1 | Non-interferometric thin film lithium niobate modulator for data transmission | 1 |
| 9 | US12282214B2 | Thin film lithium niobate optical device having an engineered substrate for heterogeneous integration | 1 |
| 10 | CA3239358A1 | Systems and methods for integration of thin film optical materials in silicon photonics | 1 |
Citation counts favour older records in any searched corpus — read them as a signal of influence on later filings, not as a measure of current importance.
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Three patterns stand out once the ranking and IPC composition are read together: a device architecture that is well-established in the most-cited filings, a shallow bench of active assignees, and classification data that says where claim space is actually occupied.
Five filers hold nearly the whole field
The top 5 combined account for 17 of the 18 records in scope, with a sixth assignee filling out the ranking to 100%. A new entrant is not competing against a broad field — it is competing against a handful of established filers whose claims likely already cover the core electrode and waveguide geometries.
Activity peaked in 2022 and has since gone quiet on paper
Every ranked assignee shows zero filings in the latest year, with the two assignees for which year-over-year figures are available both down 100%. Given the 18-month publication lag, this looks like a reporting gap rather than an abandoned field — but it means the public record cannot yet confirm renewed activity.
Optical modulation claims dominate; coating and semiconductor integration are thin
G02F carries two in three records, confirming that most claims target the modulation function itself. B05D and H01L each cover a single record — thin-film deposition and semiconductor-integration angles on TFLN modulators are barely represented in the granted-and-published record so far.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to thin-film lithium niobate modulators, with the prior art for and against each one.
A field with one clear leader and a short tail
Six assignees make up the entire ranking returned for this search. The leader holds 6 records; by fifth place, the count is down to 1 — a steep drop that is itself informative about how contested individual claims are likely to be.
One filer sets the pace
The top-ranked assignee holds 6 of the 18 records in scope, roughly a third of the entire dataset on its own. Its filings anchor the most-cited group and are the starting point for any freedom-to-operate review in this space.
The bottom of the ranking is a single filing each
By the fifth position the ranking has fallen to a single record, and the sixth assignee completes the field at 100% combined coverage. This is not a landscape with a deep bench of active competitors — it is a small group of specialists plus isolated single-patent entrants.
No ranked assignee shows current-year filing
Every one of the six ranked assignees reports zero filings in the latest year, with confirmed -100% year-over-year change where prior-year data exists. Read this alongside the 18-month publication lag rather than as evidence the technology has stalled.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Raytheon Company | 0 | — |
| President and Fellows of Harvard College | 0 | -100% |
| HyperLight Corporation | 0 | — |
| Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) | 0 | — |
| Tianjin University of Science and Technology | 0 | -100% |
| OPTILAB LLC | 0 | — |
Where to take this next
The dataset points to a concentrated field with specific under-claimed edges. These are the natural next steps for a team deciding where to file or where to watch.
Run a freedom-to-operate check against the top 5
With 94.4% of the 18 records held by five assignees, a targeted FTO review of those filers' claims — starting with the most-cited devices — will surface most of the relevant prior art faster than a broad landscape search.
Explore assignee claims in EurekaWatch the coating and semiconductor-integration classes
B05D and H01L each hold a single record. If deposition or CMOS-integration work is part of a roadmap, this is where a first-mover claim is still realistically available.
Track IPC white space in EurekaRe-check the trend line after the lag window closes
The zero-filing latest year across all assignees is consistent with an 18-month publication lag, not necessarily a real slowdown. Re-running this search in a year will confirm whether 2024-2025 filings materialise.
Set a monitoring alert in EurekaCommon questions about thin-film lithium niobate modulator patents
The ranked dataset returns six assignees in total, and the leading one holds 6 of the 18 records in scope — the largest single share in the field. The top five assignees together hold 94.4% of all 18 records, meaning the great majority of the documented patent activity sits with a small group rather than being spread across many competitors. Anyone assessing freedom to operate should start with that leading assignee's most-cited filings before looking further down the list.
Filing activity peaked at 5 records in 2022 and the visible trend shows nothing in the most recent year across any ranked assignee. That drop should not be read as the technology stalling: patent publication typically lags the actual filing date by around 18 months, so the last one to two years in any trend chart are always undercounted. A reliable growth rate cannot be computed here because too few complete years remain once that lag is accounted for.
The search underlying this dataset targets specific engineering parameters: half-wave voltage, electro-optic bandwidth, optical insertion loss, travelling-wave electrode design, bias drift, and velocity matching. These are the parameters that determine whether a thin-film lithium niobate modulator is fast enough and efficient enough for a given data-transmission application, and they show up consistently in the most-cited records' titles and abstracts. This is a device-engineering patent set, not a materials-science one.
G02F, the classification for optical control and modulation devices, covers 66.7% of the 18 records in scope, making it by far the dominant classification. G02B, covering optical elements and systems more broadly, is the next most common at 38.9%. Coating processes (B05D) and semiconductor devices (H01L) each appear on only one record, indicating that deposition and chip-integration angles on this technology are only lightly represented in the published patent record so far.
US20250390001A1, filed by OPTILAB, LLC and published 2025-12-25, claims a non-interferometric modulator architecture where an optical waveguide runs alongside coplanar transmission lines and DC bias conductors, with the propagation constant tuned by both the RF data signal and the DC bias voltage travelling on those lines. It is recent enough that it has not yet accumulated citations, so its downstream influence on the field is not yet measurable from this dataset. Anyone designing a non-interferometric TFLN modulator with a similar bias-tuning approach should review its claims directly rather than relying on citation counts to judge its relevance.
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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.