VCSEL Quality Control Patent Landscape 2026
- Filing activity has gone flat since its 2018 peak of 5, with 2022 sitting at zero — this is a settled art, not a growth curve.
- H01S dominates at 32 of 36 records, but G01R measurement claims (10) show the test-and-sort layer is claimed almost as a laser-design problem.
- United States receiving offices account for 25 of 36 families, leaving Europe, Germany, China, Korea and PCT routes comparatively thin.
Filing growth compares 2021 (4 records) with 2024 (0) — 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 36 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This dataset tracks patent families at the intersection of VCSEL (vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser) devices and the quality-control operations applied to them before they leave the fab: wafer-level test, burn-in, binning and in-line inspection. The search deliberately narrows to IPC classes H01S5/00 (semiconductor lasers) and G01R31/26 (semiconductor device testing), so it captures claims that fuse device structure with test methodology rather than either topic alone.
Coverage runs from 2015 through the 2026 cut-off, with 36 published records forming 36 distinct families — a one-to-one ratio that suggests little continuation filing or multi-jurisdiction duplication in this corner of the art.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 36-family dataset: how filing activity moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim weight.
A peak in 2018, then silence
Filings rose to 5 in 2018, then filing counts fall away — the midpoint year 2022 records zero. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the final one or two years understate true activity, but the shape through the peak is not a ramp still in progress; it is a technology that was claimed early and then largely left alone.
H01S carries the claims, G01R carries the test logic
H01S accounts for 32 of 36 records — most applicants frame quality control as an extension of laser-device claims rather than a standalone test method. G01R appears in 10 records, H01L (semiconductor devices) in 7, and G01S and H04B each appear once, marking VCSEL QC's occasional spillover into positioning and transmission use-cases.
Shares are the percentage of the 36 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on VCSEL Quality Control with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about vcsel quality control and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe representative filing and the most-cited prior art
US11955778B2 — VCSEL binning for optical interconnects
A method and system for large-scale VCSEL binning from wafers, sorting devices by measured DC and small-signal parameters into clusters and then into sub-groups compatible with a specific Clock-Data Recovery Unit and/or VCSEL driver, with feedback signalling used to equalize control across the resulting bins.Filed by Mellanox Technologies; granted 2024-04-09.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5493577A | Efficient semiconductor light-emitting device and method | 525 |
| 2 | US6670599B2 | Semitransparent optical detector on a flexible substrate and method of making | 110 |
| 3 | US20160141839A1 | Vertical cavity surface emitting laser array | 31 |
| 4 | US20160156157A1 | Vertical cavity surface emitting laser array and method for manufacturing the same | 31 |
| 5 | US20020076841A1 | Transmitter array burn-in using a submount substrate | 24 |
| 6 | US6623997B2 | Method for burn-in processing of optical transmitter arrays using a submount substrate | 21 |
| 7 | US20180003762A1 | Transducer reliability testing | 15 |
| 8 | US20050036529A1 | VCSEL settling fixture | 10 |
| 9 | US20150280393A1 | Low cost optical package | 8 |
| 10 | US7957447B2 | VCSEL array device and method for manufacturing the VCSEL array device | 6 |
Citation counts reward older filings simply for having been on the shelf longer; read this table as a map of influence within the searched corpus, not as a ranking of current 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 say about where this field stands
Four figures from the dataset, and what each implies for a team deciding where to file or where to design around.
The wave has passed, not built
A 2018 peak of five filings followed by a zero at the 2022 midpoint is a decay curve, not a plateau before a new wave. New entrants are more likely to be licensing or acquiring than out-innovating on core binning methods.
QC is claimed as device art
Nearly every record sits in the laser-device subclass rather than a pure test-method class, meaning freedom-to-operate searches confined to G01R alone will miss most of the relevant art.
Protection is concentrated, not global
With Europe, Germany, China, Korea and PCT together accounting for the remaining 11 families, enforcement risk outside the US is comparatively light — and so is the incentive to file defensively there.
Co-filing is rare and personal
Only eight co-assignee pairs appear across the corpus, and the strongest links are a single company paired with named individual inventors rather than joint ventures between firms — this is largely single-assignee territory.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to vcsel quality control, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| Vixar, Inc. | SETIADI DADI | 1 |
| Vixar, Inc. | OLSON BENJAMIN | 1 |
| Vixar, Inc. | JOHNSON KLEIN L | 1 |
| Vixar, Inc. | HIBBS BRENNER MARY | 1 |
| Vixar, Inc. | DUMMER MATTHEW | 1 |
| IQE plc | WAGNER SIGURD | 1 |
| IQE plc | PAYNE ADAM M | 1 |
| IQE plc | MA EUGENE Y | 1 |
The strongest co-assignee pairs all trace back to one company working with individually named inventors, not to cross-company joint filings — a sign that VCSEL QC IP is built in-house rather than through formal R&D partnerships.
Who holds the ground, and where it's still open
Assignee activity in this corpus has gone quiet across the board: every tracked assignee shows zero filings in the latest year, consistent with the broader flat-to-declining trend.
Vixar, Inc. (Vixar)
Anchors the strongest co-assignee links in the dataset, each pairing the company with a single named inventor rather than another firm, consistent with in-house device-and-test claim building.
Mellanox Technologies, Ltd. (Mellanox Technologies)
Holds the representative record in this landscape, US11955778B2, which frames binning explicitly around driver and CDRU compatibility rather than generic device sorting.
Agilent Technologies, Inc. (Agilent Technologies)
Appears among the tracked assignees with no recent-year activity, part of a broader pattern in which no major player in this corpus has filed within the latest tracked year.
Infineon Technologies AG (Infineon Technologies)
Its presence in the assignee set without recent filings underscores that even semiconductor-device incumbents have not returned to this specific claim space recently.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Vixar, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Agilent Technologies, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Murata Manufacturing Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Mellanox Technologies, Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Sycamore Networks, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Infineon Technologies AG | 0 | — |
| Lockheed Martin Corporation | 0 | — |
| Mellanox Technologies, Ltd. | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
This landscape flags the shape of the art; deciding whether to file, license or design around it takes a closer read of the claims themselves.
Run a claim-level freedom-to-operate check
Because 32 of 36 records sit under H01S rather than a pure test-method class, a search limited to G01R will miss most of the relevant claims — worth re-running with both classes together.
Explore in Patsnap EurekaTrack the assignees for licensing signals
With every major assignee at zero filings in the latest year, acquisition or licensing activity is a more likely next move than fresh filing — worth monitoring assignment records rather than just new publications.
Set up monitoring in Patsnap EurekaCommon questions about VCSEL quality control patents
The core classes are H01S5/00, covering semiconductor laser devices including VCSELs, and G01R31/26, covering electrical testing of semiconductor devices. In this dataset, H01S appears in 32 of 36 records and G01R in 10, meaning most quality-control claims are drafted as extensions of device claims rather than as standalone test methods. A search limited to G01R alone would miss the majority of relevant filings, so practitioners should search both classes together.
Based on this 36-family dataset, filing activity peaked in 2018 at 5 filings and had fallen to zero by the 2022 midpoint, indicating a flat-to-declining trend rather than sustained growth. Publication lag of roughly 18 months means the most recent one or two years are understated, but the overall shape through the peak shows an art claimed early and not heavily revisited since. This suggests the field is settled rather than in an active land-grab phase.
The assignee set includes Vixar, Mellanox Technologies, Agilent Technologies, Murata Manufacturing, Infineon Technologies and Sycamore Networks, among others tracked in this corpus. Mellanox holds the representative record, US11955778B2, on VCSEL binning for optical interconnects. Co-filing is rare in this space — only 8 co-assignee pairs appear across all 36 families, and the strongest links pair a single company with named individual inventors rather than joint ventures.
US11955778B2, assigned to Mellanox Technologies, claims a method of sorting VCSELs from wafer-level measurements of DC and small-signal parameters into clusters, then further sorting those clusters into sub-groups compatible with a specific Clock-Data Recovery Unit or VCSEL driver, with a feedback signal used to equalize control across bins. The claim is narrower than generic binning because it ties the sort criteria to driver and CDRU compatibility rather than device performance alone. Anyone binning VCSELs purely by optical or electrical performance thresholds, without that driver-compatibility feedback loop, sits outside its core claim language.
The IPC composition points to thin coverage outside core H01S device claims: G01S (positioning) and H04B (transmission) each appear only once, suggesting VCSEL QC methods tailored to those use-cases are largely unclaimed. Within the test workflow itself, multi-parameter cluster binning algorithms and driver-compatible sub-group sorting beyond Mellanox's specific claim are comparatively open. Wafer-level burn-in thermal profiling and in-line optical inspection for arrays also show limited dedicated claim density relative to their role in production, making them worth a closer look before assuming the space is occupied.
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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.