Wet Etching Patents: Top Companies & Filing Trends 2026
Wet Etching and Selectivity Control Patents: Who Holds the Ground
29.7% concentration at the top. The five leading assignees hold 2,857 of 9,618 records in scope, but that still leaves a long tail of single- and low-filing entrants below tenth place. Filings rose to a peak of 485 records in 2020, then declined from 452 in 2021 to 250 in 2024 — a 45% fall over that three-year window. Treat 2025 and 2026 figures as provisional given publication lag; they are not evidence of a further slowdown.
- 1APPLIED MATERIALS INC9.0%
- 2TOKYO ELECTRON LTD7.5%
- 3LAM RES CORP7.4%
- 4ENTEGRIS INC3.3%
- 5INSCRIPTA INC2.5%
See the full wet etching and selectivity control analysis in Eureka
- The complete ranking, not just the top five
- Every IPC branch with its share of the corpus
- The most-cited records, and where claim space is still thin
Common questions on this landscape
Who holds the most patents in wet etching and selectivity control?
One assignee leads the ranking with 868 records, more than triple the fifth-place count of 238. The top five combined hold 2,857 of the 9,618 records in scope — 29.7% of the field — with a steep drop-off after that into a long tail of smaller filers. This concentration pattern is typical of a field anchored by process-tool and equipment suppliers rather than spread evenly across device makers.
Is wet etching patent filing activity growing or shrinking?
Filings peaked at 485 records in 2020 and then declined from 452 in 2021 to 250 in 2024, a 45% drop over that three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year that can be read as materially complete because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the apparent falls in 2025 and 2026 are partly an artefact of that lag rather than confirmed further decline. Read the 2021-2024 contraction as the reliable signal.
What technology areas do wet etching patents fall under?
Just over half of all records in scope, 51.8%, carry an H01L semiconductor-devices classification, meaning most wet-etch and selectivity claims are filed inside a broader device or fabrication-process patent. H10P (22.2%) and G01N material analysis and testing (10.7%) are the next largest subclasses. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC codes, these shares overlap rather than sum to a whole field.
Disclaimer. This analysis is based on Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent records and is provided for general information and reference only. Patent data carries inherent limitations — recent filings are under-counted because of publication lag, counts may be on a record or family basis, classification and applicant-name data may contain errors or duplicates, and the underlying search query defines the scope shown — so the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing here is an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Verify independently and review with qualified patent and legal professionals before acting on it.
Method: Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Wet Etching and Selectivity Control covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish. Every share divides by all records in scope. Data: Patsnap Eureka. See the full landscape report.