Transparent Display Color Filter Patents: Who Leads, Gaps 2026
- Filing peaked in 2023 at 190 families, then growth flattened — 2022's 65 sits well below that peak, and the partial 2026 count of 18 suggests the surge has passed rather than paused.
- One assignee's activity fell 89% year-on-year, even though it still leads recent filing at 14 families in the latest year — a sign of consolidation, not retreat, from the dominant player.
- H10K organic-semiconductor claims cover 598 of 809 records, meaning almost three-quarters of this dataset sits inside OLED-adjacent structure claims rather than pure color-filter chemistry.
Filing growth compares 2021 (30 records) with 2024 (161) — 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 809 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Transparent display color filter technology sits at the intersection of OLED emissive-layer design and the optical stack that lets a viewer see through the panel while still resolving color. The search underlying this page pulls 809 patent families published between 2015 and mid-2026 that combine transparent-display terms (transparent OLED, see-through display) with color-management terms (transparent color filter, color conversion layer, patterned color filter). That intersection is narrower than transparent-display patenting as a whole, so the counts here describe a specific engineering problem: how to keep a display see-through without sacrificing color fidelity, not transparent displays in general.
Because publication lags filing by roughly eighteen months, the 2025 and 2026 counts in the trend chart are undercounts of what has actually been filed — treat the most recent two bars as a floor, not a ceiling.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 809 families: when they were filed, and which parts of the classification system they claim into.
A filing curve that already crested
Annual filings rose from 19 in 2017 to a peak of 190 in 2023, then eased back. The 2022 midpoint of 65 shows the climb was not steady — most of the volume arrived in a short window around 2022-2023 rather than building gradually across the decade. A partial 2026 of 18 is consistent with a slowdown, not an anomaly.
Concentrated in organic-semiconductor structure claims
H10K (organic semiconductors, 598 records) dominates the classification mix, with H01L semiconductor devices (208) and C09K materials (242) as the next-largest blocks. Organic and heterocyclic chemistry subclasses — C07F, C07D, C07B — together account for over 200 records, showing that a meaningful share of this space is chemistry-of-materials patenting rather than device architecture. G02F optical modulation and G06F data-processing subclasses are comparatively thin, at 60 and 24 records respectively.
Shares are the percentage of the 809 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Transparent Display Color Filter with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about transparent display color filter and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited prior art in this space
US11289546B2 — Transparent display device (LG Display, 2022)
A transparent display device for providing only a viewer located at the front with an image is disclosed. The transparent display device comprises a substrate provided with a first subpixel, a second subpixel and a third subpixel, a first electrode provided in each of the first subpixel, the second subpixel and the third subpixel on the substrate, a light emitting layer provided on the first electrode, a second electrode provided on the light emitting layer, an upper color filter provided over the second electrode, a lower color conversion layer provided between the substrate and the first electrode, and a lower color filter provided between the substrate and the lower color conversion layer.Note the double color-management stack — both a color conversion layer and a lower color filter beneath the emissive layer, plus an upper color filter above it — which is the structural detail most likely to define freedom-to-operate boundaries in this filing.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20130286053A1 | Direct view augmented reality eyeglass-type display | 419 |
| 2 | US20150340346A1 | Structure of a semiconductor array | 171 |
| 3 | US20130306945A1 | Light-emitting element, light-emitting device, display device, electronic device, and lighting device | 149 |
| 4 | US20130082589A1 | Power efficient RGBW OLED display | 119 |
| 5 | US8653553B2 | Light-emitting element, light-emitting device, display device, electronic device, and lighting device | 115 |
| 6 | US6165543A | Method of making organic EL device and organic EL transfer base plate | 100 |
| 7 | US20130277654A1 | Light-Emitting Element, Light-Emitting Device, Display Device, Electronic Device, and Lighting Device | 90 |
| 8 | US20140042469A1 | Light-Emitting Element, Light-Emitting Device, Display Device, Electronic Device, and Lighting Device | 80 |
| 9 | US20170122502A1 | Display with color conversion | 74 |
| 10 | US20170271610A1 | Light-emitting element, display device, electronic device, and lighting device | 70 |
Citation counts accumulate over time, so older filings are structurally favoured. Read this table as a map of influential prior art, not a list of currently dominant technology.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three read-outs from the trend and classification data that matter more than the raw totals.
The surge has already happened
Filing rose sharply into 2023 and has since pulled back toward pre-peak levels. A new entrant filing now is filing into a space where the dominant players already built out their core claims during the 2021-2023 window — the open questions are in adjacent structures, not the core stack.
OLED structure, not filter chemistry, is the crowded zone
Nearly three in four families sit in the organic-semiconductor subclass. Pure color-filter and color-conversion chemistry (C09K, C07F, C07D, C07B combined) is present but proportionally smaller, suggesting device-architecture claims are more contested than materials claims.
Filing is heavily US-weighted
The United States dominates as receiving office, with Europe, WIPO/PCT and Germany trailing well behind. A design-around or clearance search focused only on EPO or PCT filings will miss most of the corpus.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to transparent display color filter, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where activity is shifting
Recent-year momentum diverges sharply from historical volume — several long-time filers have gone quiet while one assignee still leads, at a much reduced pace.
Samsung Display still leads, but is pulling back
Samsung Display remains the most active filer in the most recent year tracked, yet its filing count fell 89% year-on-year — the steepest drop among tracked assignees with recent activity, consistent with a company that built out its core claim set in prior years.
Samsung Electronics holds flat
Samsung Electronics (Korea) shows no year-on-year change at a low absolute count, suggesting maintenance-level filing rather than an active push into new claim territory.
Semiconductor Energy Laboratory and Canon have stopped filing
Both assignees show a complete drop to zero in the latest tracked year after prior activity, which may reflect a shift in R&D priorities, portfolio maturity, or filings not yet published given the publication lag.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Samsung Display Co., Ltd. | 14 | -89% |
| Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (Korea) | 2 | 0% |
| Universal Display Corporation | 1 | -80% |
| BOE Technology Group Co., Ltd. | 1 | — |
| Semiconductor Energy Laboratory Co., Ltd. | 0 | -100% |
| Canon Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| 3M Innovative Properties Company (USA) | 0 | — |
| LG Display Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a specific set of follow-up questions rather than a single conclusion.
Check freedom-to-operate against the H10K core
With nearly three-quarters of records touching organic-semiconductor structure claims, any new device architecture should be checked against that block first, not against color-filter materials chemistry alone.
Run a clearance search in EurekaWatch the momentum shift, not just the leaderboard
Assignees with historically high volume but zero recent filings may be repositioning rather than exiting — track publication of newer applications as the 18-month lag clears.
Set up monitoring in EurekaExplore the under-claimed branches
G02F optical modulation and G06F data-processing claims are thin relative to the OLED core — that gap is worth a closer technical read before assuming it is empty for a reason.
Explore white space in EurekaCommon questions about transparent display color filter patents
This dataset tracks 809 patent families published between 2015 and mid-2026 that combine transparent-display terms with color-filter or color-conversion terms. That figure is narrower than transparent-display patenting overall, because it requires both the transparency element and a specific color-management approach to appear together. Because publication typically lags filing by around eighteen months, the true 2025-2026 filing count is higher than currently published records show.
Samsung Display is the most active filer in the most recent tracked year, though its filing count fell sharply year-on-year, which points to a maturing rather than expanding portfolio. Samsung Electronics, LG Display, BOE Technology and Universal Display all appear among the more active assignees historically. Several historically prolific filers, including Semiconductor Energy Laboratory and Canon, show no filings in the latest tracked year.
A color filter selectively passes wavelengths of light already emitted by the display, typically absorbing everything outside a target color band, while a color conversion layer actively shifts the wavelength of emitted light before it reaches the viewer. Representative filings in this space, such as US11289546B2, combine both approaches in a single device — pairing an upper color filter with a lower color conversion layer and a separate lower color filter to manage color across a transparent stack. The combination is used to preserve transparency in unlit regions while still producing accurate color where pixels are active.
Filing rose from 19 families in 2017 to a peak of 190 in 2023, then declined toward the 2022 midpoint level of 65 and below. This pattern is typical of a technology area where core architectural claims — the basic transparent-pixel and filter-stack structures — were staked out during a concentrated filing window, after which activity naturally slows as companies shift toward narrower refinements. The partial 2026 figure of 18 should be read cautiously given the usual publication lag.
Relative to the dense H10K organic-semiconductor core, subclasses like G02F (optical modulation) and G06F (software-driven color processing) carry far fewer records, suggesting comparatively open claim territory around tunable optical layers and digital color-correction methods for transparent panels. Heterocyclic color-conversion chemistry under C07D is also thinner than the device-architecture side of the dataset. These are not guarantees of novelty, but they are areas where filing density does not match the crowding seen in the core OLED structure claims.
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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.