LexisNexis’ 2026 “Who Is Leading the 5G Patent Race?” report evaluates patent portfolios on quality, not just quantity. The results tell a different story than raw patent counts — and a particularly interesting one for US-based innovators.
LexisNexis published their annual 5G patent ranking in January 2026, covering the top 50 global patent owners. The headline results are familiar: Huawei leads overall, followed by Qualcomm, Samsung, and Ericsson. These four companies have dominated 5G patent rankings for years, and that has not changed.
What makes this year’s report worth a closer look is how it ranks companies not only by the number of 5G-declared patent families, but also by the Patent Asset Index — a quality-weighted metric that measures how much later innovation builds on a given patent and how broadly the patent owner seeks protection across jurisdictions. When you compare the two rankings side by side — volume versus quality — the shifts are revealing.
The gap between a company’s volume rank and its Patent Asset Index rank tells you something about the nature of the portfolio. A positive gap means the company’s patents are more heavily cited by later innovations and more broadly protected across jurisdictions than their count alone would suggest. Seven US-based companies appear in the global top 50, and six of the seven rank higher on quality than on volume.
InterDigital’s jump from 19th to 7th is the largest positive shift of any company in the entire top 50. Dolby, not typically associated with wireless, moves up 10 positions. The common thread across the group is not business model — it is that these portfolios tend to be more broadly filed internationally and more frequently cited by subsequent innovations than their patent counts alone would indicate.
Reordering just the US companies by quality instead of volume, Ofinno moves to 4th among US patent holders in the global top 50:
For Ofinno, the data is consistent with what has been our approach from the start: focus research in the core technical areas of the standard and seek broad international protection for the resulting patents.
The full LexisNexis report, including rankings across all 50 companies and breakdowns by 3GPP working group, is available here.
