LexisNexis Report Identifies top 50 Global Innovators Leading the Patent Race in $15 Billion 5G Licensing Market

Published by LexisNexis Intellectual Property Solutions, New Analysis Reinforces Importance of Patent Accuracy for Companies to Increase Licensing Revenue

NEW YORK, Jan. 26, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- LexisNexis^® Legal & Professional, a leading provider of intelligent patent analytics, today released “Who Is Leading the 5G Patent Race 2026,” a new analysis tracking the companies, economics, and trends driving the 5G patent space. The report was published by LexisNexis^® Intellectual Property Solutions, the company’s global business unit dedicated to patent analytics, portfolio strategy, and licensing intelligence.

According to the report, the global 5G patent landscape continues to be dominated by major patentholders whose standard-essential patents (SEP) underpin an estimated $15 billion annual 5G licensing market. The report also reinforces the importance of patent data accuracy as a business driver for individual companies, as millions in annual licensing value can shift as courts, licensors, and implementers rely on patent data to inform licensing negotiations, litigation strategies, and FRAND determinations.

As 5G implementation accelerates beyond smartphones into industrial IoT, automotive, healthcare, and critical infrastructure, SEPs are playing an increasingly central role in shaping global technology markets. The 2026 analysis examines leadership across granted and active 5G patent family declarations, value-adjusted portfolio indicators, and technical contributions to the 3GPP standardization process.

Key findings from the 2026 analysis include:

• A Top 50 ranking based on 5G SEP patent portfolio size, portfolio strength, and 5G-relevant 3GPP contributions, showing both a composite average rank and individual rankings by each metric.
• Patent data accuracy has a significant financial impact, as even small discrepancies in perceived portfolio share can translate into hundreds of millions of dollars in annual licensing value in a $15 billion global market.
• New entrants to the Top 50 list in 2026 include research-focused organizations, licensing and investment-led IP holders, and automotive and IoT connectivity specialists, which replaced several operator-centric and diversified industrial portfolios that fell below the Top 50 threshold.
• Top 50 5G patent owners reflected broad geographic diversity, with companies headquartered in China (14), Japan (9), the United States (9), Europe (7), Taiwan (5), South Korea (5), and Canada (1).
• Patent data is increasingly relied upon in FRAND determinations, making the quality, consistency, and verification of declaration data a critical factor for both licensors and implementers.

“As 5G licensing moves deeper into industrial, automotive, and infrastructure markets, the financial stakes tied to patent data accuracy continue to rise,” said Tim Pohlmann, Director of SEP Analytics for LexisNexis Intellectual Property Solutions. “In a licensing environment of this scale, even small differences in how 5G patent portfolios are measured can materially influence negotiations. That is why verified, unbiased data has become essential, not only for understanding who leads the 5G patent race, but for supporting defensible, data-driven FRAND discussions.”

Raising the bar on 5G declaration data

The 2026 analysis is grounded in the Cellular Verified initiative led by LexisNexis Intellectual Property Solutions. Through this initiative, LexisNexis compared public ETSI declaration data with internal records from 35 ETSI-declaring companies, applying rigorous matching, normalization, patent family expansion, and corporate-tree ownership analysis.

This validation process is designed to reduce bias introduced by differing declaration practices and to provide a more accurate and impartial representation of declared 5G patent portfolios, an increasingly critical requirement as rankings and portfolio assessments are used as economic and legal reference points in licensing and litigation contexts.

The full “Who Is Leading the 5G Patent Race 2026” analysis, including the Top 50 5G Patent Rankings 2026 and detailed information on the underlying data methodology and validation process, is available at www.LexisNexisIP.com/5G-Report-2026

About LexisNexis^® Legal & Professional 

LexisNexis^® Legal & Professional provides AI-powered legal, regulatory, business information, analytics, and workflows that help customers increase their productivity, improve decision-making, achieve better outcomes, and advance the rule of law around the world. As a digital pioneer, the company was the first to bring legal and business information online with its Lexis^® and Nexis^® services. LexisNexis Legal & Professional, which serves customers in more than 150 countries with 11,800 employees worldwide, is part of RELX, a global provider of information-based analytics and decision tools for professional and business customers.

About LexisNexis^® Intellectual Property Solutions   

LexisNexis^® Intellectual Property Solutions brings clarity to innovation for businesses worldwide. We enable innovators to accomplish more by helping them make informed decisions, be more productive, comply with regulations, and ultimately achieve a competitive advantage for their business. Our broad suite of workflow and analytics solutions (LexisNexis^® PatentSight+™, LexisNexis^® Classification, LexisNexis^® TechDiscovery, LexisNexis^® IPlytics™, LexisNexis PatentOptimizer^®, LexisNexis PatentAdvisor^®, and LexisNexis TotalPatent One^®, LexisNexis^® IP DataDirect), enables companies to be more efficient and effective at bringing meaningful innovations to our world. We are proud to directly support and serve these innovators in their endeavors to better humankind. 

Media Contact

Andrew Weinstein 
Andrew.Weinstein@LexisNexis.com

LexisNexis | Intellectual Property Solutions

Bringing clarity to innovation

Name: Andrew Weinstein
Email: andrew.weinstein@lexisnexis.com
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