https://eureka.patsnap.com/resources/blog/rd-blog/serverless-function-unikernel-based-execution-isolation-patent-landscape/ · Patsnap · data cut-off 2026-10-22 · downloaded from the live page
Patent Landscape · Software & Cloud Systems

Serverless Function Unikernel Execution Isolation Patents

Covers 3 patent families and 19 records on serverless unikernel isolation, led by Microsoft on filing volume.

19
Published Records
3
Simple Patent Families
74%
In Force at Cut-off
US
Leading Jurisdiction

19 published records collapse into 3 simple (DOCDB) families; the difference is the same invention filed in more than one country. In force = 14 of 19 records still granted and maintained at the data cut-off; the rest are pending, withdrawn, refused or lapsed.

  • 3 simple patent families and 19 published records make up this entire search result. No date limit was applied, so this is every matching record the search string returns.
  • Microsoft Technology Licensing is named on 2 of the 2 families (66.7%). International Business Machines is the other listed filer, named on 2 or fewer families.
  • 14 of the 19 published records (74%) were granted and still in force at retrieval. The remaining records are pending, withdrawn, refused, lapsed or not determinable, and are not broken out here.
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Published byPatsnap Research··5 min readSourced from Patsnap Eureka
Overview

What this search returns

This page covers records matched by a search string combining serverless or function as a service with unikernel and isolation or execution in title, abstract and claims. The result is 3 simple patent families, de-duplicated across countries, and 19 published records, counted one per publication. No start year or end year was set on the search, so the records span whatever dates the matching documents happen to carry.

With only 3 families in scope, this is a small pool. The figures below describe exactly what this search returned rather than the shape of a field or a market, and the page is a starting point for a more targeted search rather than a map of who has filed on unikernel-based execution isolation.

Records and families in scope
  1. MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING LLC2
  2. INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINE CORPORATION1

Ordered by volume only, not by importance or claim strength. Counted in simple (DOCDB) patent families, so one invention filed in several countries counts once. Names come from Patsnap's standardised assignee field as recorded on each document; subsidiaries and group companies are not merged. The icon before each name is read from the name itself (words such as University, Institute or Ltd); the data carries no organisation-type field, so treat it as a reading aid rather than a classification. Filings held by named individuals rather than organisations are removed where they can be identified; that identification is not exhaustive, so an individually held filing can still appear below. Either way those filings stay inside the totals above. This table shows the top 2 of the 2 filers returned for this search; the data endpoint returns at most 100 entities, so even that 2 is not the complete set of filers. A single family can name more than one filer, so these counts overlap and do not add up to the total.

Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee ranking and totals. Derived from one Patsnap search for Serverless Function Unikernel Based Execution Isolation Patent Landscape, covering all matching records regardless of filing date (the search string sets no date limit), retrieved 2026-10-22. Counts cover published records only and move as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Data

Filing trend and technology composition

The chart below plots published records by earliest filing year, and the subclass breakdown shows which IPC groups the 3 families fall under.

Filing trend (published records)

Records run from 2017 through 2026, with a peak of 10 in 2021. Years from 2022 onward are shaded because recent filings have not finished publishing, so the most recent years understate the eventual count; no growth rate is reported given how thin this series is.

Filing trend (published records)035810120172018201920201020212022202320242025020262022 onwards are shaded as still filling in: a filing is only visible once it publishes, up to 30 months after filing.

Counted in published records by earliest filing year, not de-duplicated into families. A filing is counted in the year it was filed, but it only becomes visible after it publishes: roughly 18 months for most routes, and up to 30 months where a PCT application enters national phase. 2022 onwards are therefore still filling in and are shaded; no growth figure on this page uses them. Because this series counts documents rather than inventions, a rise can mean more inventions or the same inventions filed in more countries; this dataset cannot separate the two.

IPC subclass composition

G06F (Electric digital data processing) covers all 3 families in scope (100.0%); H04L (Digital information transmission) covers 1 of the 3 (33.3%). Because a family can carry more than one class, these shares add up to more than 100%.

IPC subclass compositionG06F · Electric digital data processi…3100.0%H04L · Digital information transmissi…133.3%

Shares are the percentage of the 3 patent families in scope. One patent family can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.

Source: Patsnap Eureka. Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from one Patsnap search for Serverless Function Unikernel Based Execution Isolation Patent Landscape, covering all matching records regardless of filing date (the search string sets no date limit), retrieved 2026-10-22. Counts cover published records only and move as new filings publish.

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Example record

A record from the result set

First record returned
US20190018715A12019-01-17

Facilitating event-driven processing using unikernels

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION

The abstract describes a unikernel-based method for event-driven processing: an application code unikernel, packaged as a single-purpose virtual machine image, receives a code execution request carrying parameter values tied to an event. The unikernel is booted with those values supplied as boot variables, and may be run directly on a hypervisor, with the image limited to the operating system components the application code needs.Shown as the first record returned under the database's default order, not as the most cited, newest or broadest filing in this set.

US20190018715A1, patent drawing 1US20190018715A1, patent drawing 2
View full record

Selected as the first record the search returns under the database default order, then shown in full. It is not ranked by citations, claim breadth or commercial importance, and it is not a judgement about which filing in this space matters most.

Source: Patsnap Eureka. The first record the search returned, shown in full. Derived from one Patsnap search for Serverless Function Unikernel Based Execution Isolation Patent Landscape, covering all matching records regardless of filing date (the search string sets no date limit), retrieved 2026-10-22. Counts cover published records only and move as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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Figures

What the numbers show

Four figures from this search, reported as counted, with their units and limits attached.

Scope
3 families / 19 records
simple patent families / published records

Size of the result set

The search returns 3 simple patent families, de-duplicated across countries, and 19 published records, counted one per publication. No date range was applied, so this is every matching record the string returns regardless of filing date.

Counted at retrieval, 2026-10-22
Largest filer
66.7%
share of 3 families

Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC family share

Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC is named on 2 of the 2 simple patent families in scope, a 66.7% share of that total. The list returns organisations only; filings held by named individuals are excluded from the table but remain inside the overall totals.

Filer rows are not summed; each share belongs to its own row
Legal status
14 of 19
published records, at retrieval

Granted and in force

14 of the 19 published records (74%) were granted and still in force at the retrieval date. The remaining records fall into pending, withdrawn, refused, lapsed or not-determinable states, which are not broken out individually here.

Status is a snapshot, not a quality measure
Receiving offices
6 offices
published records, by filing office

Where applications were filed

Across the 19 published records, filings were made at 6 receiving offices: the United States (7), Europe/EPO (4), Austria (2), Germany (2), India (2) and WIPO/PCT (2). These counts describe where applications were filed, not where any filer is based.

Counts sum to the record total, not the family total
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Source: Patsnap Eureka. Derived observations on the same dataset. Derived from one Patsnap search for Serverless Function Unikernel Based Execution Isolation Patent Landscape, covering all matching records regardless of filing date (the search string sets no date limit), retrieved 2026-10-22. Counts cover published records only and move as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Next steps

Where to go from here

This page is a starting point built from one search string. Narrowing or widening that string, and reading granted claims directly, will tell you more than the counts on this page can.

Read the granted claims

A family count and an abstract describe what a filing is about, not what its claims require. Pull the granted claim set for any record before drawing a conclusion about scope.

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Widen or adjust the search string

With only 3 families in scope, small changes to the search terms could surface records this run missed, or confirm that the string is capturing a narrow slice on purpose.

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Source: Patsnap Eureka. Suggested next steps. No new data: every figure named here is one of those above. Derived from one Patsnap search for Serverless Function Unikernel Based Execution Isolation Patent Landscape, covering all matching records regardless of filing date (the search string sets no date limit), retrieved 2026-10-22. Counts cover published records only and move as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
FAQ

Common questions

Answers are grounded in the same dataset. Derived from one Patsnap search for Serverless Function Unikernel Based Execution Isolation Patent Landscape, covering all matching records regardless of filing date (the search string sets no date limit), retrieved 2026-10-22. Counts cover published records only and move as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP

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How this page was built, and what the numbers do and do not mean

Search. Every figure on this page comes from one Patsnap search, run once and not edited afterwards. This is the exact search string:

TAC:((serverless OR "function as a service") AND unikernel AND (isolation OR execution))

Reading the field codes: TAC searches the title, abstract and claims of each record, not the full description. The search string sets no date limit, so the scope is every matching record in the database regardless of when it was filed. It is not restricted to recent years. How this string was built matters for how far the counts can be pushed. It was generated in batch from a topic list rather than hand-crafted for this page, and the result set is not manually screened. A keyword search over title, abstract and claims both over-captures (unrelated filings that happen to use the same words) and under-captures (the same invention written in different words). This page cannot measure either effect, so read every figure here as what this particular string returned, not as what exists in the field. One subclass (G06F) carries 100.0% of the patent families, so this search returned a classification-tight set.

What is being counted. Two different units appear on this page and they are not interchangeable. The filer list and the technology split are counted in simple (DOCDB) patent families: one invention counts once however many countries it was filed in. The total, the jurisdiction split and the filing-year chart are counted in published records: the same invention counts once per publication. For this search that is 19 records and 3 families. Record counts reward filing in many jurisdictions; family counts do not. Shares are only ever taken against a denominator in the same unit, and each one names it.

Who the filers are. Names come from Patsnap's standardised assignee field, as recorded on the documents themselves. They are not rolled up to corporate group: a parent and its subsidiaries appear as separate entries, and a portfolio acquired from another company stays under the name on the document unless the assignment is reflected there. This list is meant to carry organisations, not people. Filings held by a named individual are identified by matching the assignee against the inventors on the same search, and, for names written in Chinese, Japanese or Korean characters, by the name carrying no organisational suffix; those are removed from the list. Neither test is exhaustive: the inventor list it matches against is itself capped, and a personal name written in Latin script with no organisational wording in it cannot be told apart from a short company name by rule. So an individually held filing can still appear in the list. Those filings stay inside every total and share on this page either way, so the listed entries can add up to less than the total. A record shown in full further down still names its assignee exactly as the patent office records it, including where that is a person: that name is how the record is identified and checked. What is left out of the ranking is people as ranked entries, not people as cited sources. The table shows the top 2 of the 2 filers returned, ordered by count alone; the data endpoint returns at most 100 entities, so even that 2 is not every filer. One patent family can name several filers and each is counted separately, so these rows are not slices of a divided whole: adding them together over-counts, and this page deliberately publishes no combined "top five" share for that reason. See every filer, individuals included

Dates. The year chart counts by earliest filing year, not publication year. A filing only becomes visible once it publishes: roughly 18 months for most routes, and up to 30 months where a PCT application enters national phase. Measured across these pages, the year four back from today still holds only about 89% of its eventual count. 2022 onwards are therefore shaded on the chart as still filling in. The data behind this page was retrieved on 2026-10-22.

Legal status. "In force" counts documents whose legal status at retrieval was granted and maintained (14 of 19). Everything else is pending, withdrawn, refused, lapsed or not determinable, and those states are not broken out here because the underlying codes do not separate them cleanly. Legal status changes continuously and is reported per document, not per family. Get the status breakdown in Eureka

Classification. The technology split uses IPC subclasses (four characters, for example H01M). A single record usually carries several, so the shares add up to more than 100% and a record can appear in more than one bar. Subclass is a coarse grouping; it describes the field a record was classified into, not what the claims cover. Break the classes down to subgroup level

Who wrote the words. The tables, charts, counts, shares and patent numbers on this page are produced directly from the search result by a program; none of them are written or estimated by a language model. The surrounding prose, headings, FAQ answers and the answers in the question panel are drafted by a language model that is given those same figures and is not permitted to introduce others. Prose can still mis-describe a correct figure, so where the two disagree, the tables and charts are the record.

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 limitations that apply to every figure above. Recent filings are under-counted, because an application is not public until roughly 18 months after filing and database loading adds further delay. The search string defines and constrains everything shown: records that use different terminology, or that sit outside the fields searched, are absent and cannot be counted. Applicant names, classification codes, legal-status codes and citation records are taken as recorded and may contain errors, duplicates, omissions or stale entries. Ordering by volume is not a measure of quality, scope, enforceability or commercial value, and a larger portfolio is not a stronger one. 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, validity or infringement search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. No attorney-client relationship is created by it. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently against the primary records 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.

The question panel. The answers behind the suggested questions on this page were written when the page was generated, not in response to your click. The progress steps that play before an answer appears are an animation of how that analysis was done; nothing is being searched or computed at that moment. Typing your own question instead opens Patsnap Eureka, which does run it live.

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