Sparse Code Multiple Access Codebook Design Patents: Who Leads and Where the Claim Space Is Still Open

One assignee holds 173 of the 287 records in scope, making it by a wide margin the largest filer in this space. The next four ranked assignees together bring the top-five combined share to 77.7% of all 287 records, so the field is concentrated rather than fragmented. The remaining 36 ranked entities, out of 41 total, hold comparatively small counts, often in single digits, forming a long tail of research institutions and secondary industry filers.

Yes, though the trajectory is not a straight line. Filings peaked early, in 2015, at 63, then declined before rebuilding: 2021 saw 4 filings and 2024 saw 12, a +200% increase over that three-year span. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the very latest years in any dataset understate true activity, so 2024 is the most recent year that can be read as a complete signal.

The bulk of filings sit under H04L (digital information transmission), which appears on 63.4% of the 287 records, and H04B (transmission, general) at 44.6%. H04W (wireless communication networks) and H04J (multiplex communication) follow at 24.7% and 18.5% respectively. Coding-theory-specific classification under H03M and AI-based approaches under G06N are both thin, at 3.8% and 2.1%, indicating those framings are less commonly used even though they are technically relevant to codebook construction.

The United States leads with 67 filings by receiving office, followed closely by China at 64 and the European Patent Office at 57. WIPO/PCT filings account for 21 and India for 20, with Austria (AT) at 16. The close US-China figures suggest neither jurisdiction is treated as secondary; most serious filers appear to be securing protection in both.

This Huawei filing, published in March 2016, describes a network controller coordinating downlink multi-user coordinated multipoint (MU-CoMP) transmission using SCMA, including SCMA layer allocation and UE pairing across multiple transmission points. It is representative of the earliest wave of SCMA patenting activity that contributed to the 2015 filing peak. Because it addresses scheduling and layer-allocation logic rather than just the codebook structure itself, it is a useful reference point for understanding how broadly early SCMA claims were drafted around system-level deployment rather than pure codeword design.