GenAI at the Beginning – Who Owned the Most Patents and in What Application Areas?

In July 2024, WIPO published a comprehensive patent landscape report on Generative AI (GenAI) technologies, analyzing patent data complemented with an analysis of scientific literature. Patenting activity in GenAI models, modes of input and output data, and 21 identified application areas were analyzed to find trends and insights. In the visuals below, explore the data to find application areas and patent owners of your particular interest.

Identifying who owns GenAI patents and what application areas they are patenting in is of great interest globally. Not surprisingly, almost all the top patent owners – corporations and universities/research organizations – predominantly filed patents in software-related applications. The exception is the University of California, who have one-third of their GenAI patent portfolio in life science-related applications and an equal fraction in software-related applications. The next largest application area after software is life and medical sciences. Universities/research organizations dominate slightly in this application area, having a greater fraction of their GenAI portfolio in this application area compared to corporations. (note data includes patents published up to April 2024).

In the charts below, explore in further detail the patent publication data for the top 10 corporations and universities/research organizations and the various application areas they filed patents in.

Innovation in GenAI technologies has continued to explode in the last few months since the publication of this WIPO report. It will remain to be seen how patent owners and applications areas have evolved since then.