Under-Display Fingerprint Sensor Patents: Leaders & White Space 2026
- Five ranked assignees account for all 94 records in scope, with the leader alone holding 65 — a concentration rarely seen this cleanly in an optical sensing field.
- Filings peaked in 2019 at 27 and fell sharply after, with the 2021-to-2024 span down 82% — though 2025-26 data is still filling in due to publication lag.
- G06K data-recognition classes touch 72.3% of the 94 records, while OLED-specific integration (H10K) sits at just 9.6%, marking a narrower, more contested filing front than the class spread suggests.
Filing growth compares 2021 (11 records) with 2024 (2) — 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 94 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the patent record shows
Under-display fingerprint sensing covers the optical, ultrasonic and capacitive methods used to read a fingerprint through a display stack rather than beside it. The 94 records in scope span 2015 through mid-2026, concentrated on optical approaches: collimator and lens-pinhole designs, through-stack signal handling, wet-finger performance, and spoof detection. The search string ties these technical routes together rather than treating them as separate fields, which is why the assignee and class data below reads as one contested claim space rather than several loosely related ones.
Filing activity rose through the late 2010s as under-display sensing moved from prototype to shipping smartphone feature, peaked in 2019, and has declined since — a pattern consistent with a technology that moved from active claim-staking to consolidation among a small number of holders.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 94-record dataset: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses the claims actually sit in.
A sharp rise, an early peak, a real decline
Filings climbed from 7 in 2017 to a peak of 27 in 2019, then fell — the 2021-to-2024 window alone is down 82%, from 11 to 2. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete and should not be read as confirming a continued fall.
Optical and recognition classes dominate
G06K (data recognition) appears on 72.3% of the 94 records, with G06F (digital processing) and G06V (image/video recognition) each above a third. Hardware-side classes — H01L semiconductor devices, G02F optical modulation, F21V lighting components — sit lower, and H10K (OLED-specific integration) is the smallest major class at 9.6%, suggesting display-material-specific claims remain comparatively open.
Shares are the percentage of the 94 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Under-Display Fingerprint Sensing with Eureka
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Try EurekaThe most-cited records anchor the field
Optical fingerprint sensor with spoof detection and associated method
The filing describes an optical fingerprint sensor that pairs a lens array with an apertured baffle layer carrying multiple aperture stops, splitting the pixel array into ordinary imaging photodiodes and anti-spoof photodiodes tuned to detect large-angle incident light not aligned with a lens along the optical axis. The anti-spoof photodiodes are interleaved among the imaging photodiodes, giving the sensor a built-in check against spoofed or fake fingerprints without a separate sensing layer.Filed by Omnivision Technologies, published 2023-03-09.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20170316248A1 | Optical fingerprint sensor with force sensing capability | 154 |
| 2 | US20190034020A1 | Optical fingerprint sensor with non-touch imaging capability | 118 |
| 3 | US20190303639A1 | 3-dimensional optical topographical sensing of fingerprints using under-screen optical sensor module | 70 |
| 4 | US10303921B1 | On-LCD screen optical fingerprint sensing based on optical imaging with lens-pinhole module and other optical… | 44 |
| 5 | WO2018210317A1 | Optical fingerprint sensor with non-touch imaging capability | 34 |
| 6 | US20200279090A1 | Lens-pinhole array designs in ultra thin under-screen optical sensors for on-screen fingerprint sensing | 32 |
| 7 | US20200380236A1 | Fingerprint sensor under a display module with tilted receiving optics | 31 |
| 8 | WO2017070711A1 | Optical fingerprint sensor and packaging | 26 |
| 9 | WO2018014629A1 | Optical fingerprint sensor with force sensing capability | 24 |
| 10 | US20200034596A1 | Under-screen optical fingerprint sensor based on optical imaging with an optical axis off-normal to the displ… | 23 |
Citation counts reflect influence within the searched corpus and skew toward older filings; they are not a measure of current commercial importance.
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 findings that shape where new claims can realistically land in this field.
This is a closed field, not an open one
All 94 records in scope trace to five ranked assignees, with the leader alone holding 65. A new entrant is not filing into white space at the system level — it is filing around a small number of established portfolios.
The claim-staking window has largely closed
Filing activity peaked in 2019 and the 2021-to-2024 window is down 82%. That does not mean the technology is exhausted — it means the core optical-path claims were staked early, and later entrants are working the margins.
Display-material-specific integration is thin
G06K, G06F and G06V recognition and processing classes dominate the corpus, but OLED-specific integration under H10K appears on under a tenth of records. Claims tying sensor design to specific display-panel materials are comparatively sparse.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to under-display fingerprint sensing, with the prior art for and against each one.
A five-company field with one dominant holder
The assignee ranking returns exactly five companies, together covering all 94 records in scope — there is no long tail to speak of in this dataset.
One holder sets the boundary
The top-ranked assignee alone accounts for 65 of the 94 records in scope, meaning any freedom-to-operate review in this space has to start with that portfolio before looking anywhere else.
No unranked long tail
Unlike many patent landscapes with dozens of minor filers, this ranking closes at five assignees covering all 94 records — a sign the technical routes at issue are narrow enough that only a handful of firms have built defensible positions.
Recent-year activity is flat across the board
None of the five ranked assignees show filings in the latest year on record. Given the 18-month publication lag, this reads as incomplete data rather than a stopped field — but it does mean no assignee is currently shown pulling ahead.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Shenzhen Goodix Technology Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Omnivision Technologies, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Fingerprint Cards Anacatum IP AB | 0 | — |
| Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd. (TSMC) | 0 | — |
| Fingerprint Cards AB | 0 | — |
Where to take this from here
The dataset points to a concentrated, early-staked field with a narrow set of thinner branches worth checking against a specific product design.
Check freedom-to-operate against the leading holder first
With 65 of 94 records held by one assignee, any new optical fingerprint sensor design should be checked against that portfolio before broader searching.
Run a claim comparison in Eureka →Test the thinner branches for real headroom
OLED-specific integration and wet-finger correction show lower class shares than the core recognition claims — worth confirming whether that reflects open space or simply fewer public filings.
Explore white space in Eureka →Common questions on under-display fingerprint sensing patents
The assignee ranking for this dataset returns five companies covering all 94 records in scope, with the leading assignee alone holding 65. That is an unusually high concentration for an optical sensing field, and it means most freedom-to-operate work should start by reviewing that single portfolio. The remaining four assignees hold smaller shares, down to a single record for the fifth-ranked company.
No — filings peaked in 2019 at 27 and the 2021-to-2024 window fell 82%, from 11 down to 2. That said, publication typically lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the 2025 and 2026 figures in any dataset are still incomplete and should not be read as proof the decline is continuing. The safest reading is that the core claim-staking phase for this technology has passed.
Data recognition and image-processing classes dominate: G06K appears on 72.3% of the 94 records, with G06F and G06V each above a third. These figures overlap because a single record can carry several IPC classes, so they describe density of claim activity per class rather than a breakdown that sums to 100%. Hardware-integration classes like H01L semiconductor devices and G02F optical modulation are present but at meaningfully lower shares.
The technology composition data shows OLED-specific integration under H10K on just 9.6% of the 94 records, the smallest of the major classes tracked, alongside comparatively thin coverage of lighting-layer components under F21V at 10.6%. That suggests display-material-specific claims and lighting-integration designs are less crowded than the dominant recognition and processing classes. It does not guarantee those areas are patentable — only that public filing density there is lower.
US20230072103A1, filed by Omnivision Technologies and published 2023-03-09, covers an optical fingerprint sensor that uses an apertured baffle layer with interleaved anti-spoof photodiodes to detect large-angle light not aligned with the imaging lens. The method claim covers using that large-angle-light detection specifically to identify spoofed fingerprints. Anyone building an optical under-display sensor with an on-chip spoof-detection layer should review this filing's claim scope before finalising a pixel-array or baffle design.
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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.