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Run your analysis now →https://eureka.patsnap.com/resources/blog/rd-blog/static-application-security-testing-patent-landscape/ · Patsnap · data cut-off 2026-07-31 · downloaded from the live page
Patent Landscape · Program Analysis & Vulnerability DiscoveryStatic Application Security Testing patents: who holds the ground and where it is still open
- 36.5% concentration at the top. The top 5 assignees hold 298 of 816 records in scope, but the field still has a long tail beyond the ranked leaders.
- Filing has cooled from a 2020 peak of 70. Complete-year data shows 2021's 62 filings down to 37 by 2024, a -40% move — publication lag means 2025-2026 will fill in further.
- Almost all activity sits in one IPC class. G06F covers 94.1% of the 816 records, while H04L (18.6%) and G06N (11.0%) mark the clearest secondary fronts.
816
Published Records
37%
Top-5 Share of All Records
-40%
Filing Growth 2021→2024
US
Leading Jurisdiction
Filing growth compares 2021 (62 records) with 2024 (37) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 816 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
Published byPatsnap Research··7 min readSourced from Patsnap Eureka
Overview
What the SAST patent record shows
Static Application Security Testing sits at the intersection of program analysis and security tooling: patents in this set combine static code analysis, taint analysis and data flow analysis with claims aimed at controlling false positives, adding interprocedural analysis, path sensitivity, tracking source-sink pairs, defining new analysis rules, or making analysis incremental. Coverage runs from 2015 through the 2026-07-31 cut-off across 816 published records.
The filing curve rose through the late 2010s, peaked in 2020, and has since declined on a complete-year basis — a pattern consistent with a technology whose core claim space filled quickly rather than one losing relevance. Filing activity concentrated in the United States receiving office by a wide margin, with Europe, WIPO/PCT, India, China and Germany trailing well behind.
Filing volume by year, 2017-2026
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee ranking and totals. Derived from a Patsnap search on Static Application Security Testing covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
The Data
Filing trends and technology composition
816 records in scope, spanning receiving offices from the US through Europe, WIPO, India, China and Germany, classified predominantly under general-purpose computing IPC codes.
A 2020 peak, then a cooling curve
Filings ran from 32 in 2017 to a peak of 70 in 2020. On the complete-year window, 2021's 62 filings fell to 37 by 2024, a -40% move. 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so the most recent bars will rise as more records post.
One dominant class, several secondary fronts
G06F (electric digital data processing) appears on 768 of 816 records, 94.1% — effectively the home class for this search. H04L (digital information transmission, 18.6%) and G06N (AI-based computing, 11.0%) are the next most common companions, with G06Q, H04W, G08B, G09B and H04N each appearing on a small minority of records. Because a single record can carry several IPC codes, these shares sum to well over 100% and should be read individually, not added together.
Shares are the percentage of the 816 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Static Application Security Testing covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.
Go deeper on Static Application Security Testing with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about static application security testing and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaKey Patents
Representative and most-cited filings
Representative filing
US12034754B2 — Using static analysis for vulnerability detection (Fortinet, 2024-07-09)
FORTINET, INC.
Using static analysis for vulnerability detection, including: inspecting, using an underapproximate static code analysis, a non-executable representation of an application to identify one or more vulnerabilities in the application; and providing an indication of the one or more vulnerabilities, wherein the underapproximate static code analysis can include a taint analysis that is based on one or more of symbolic execution or incorrectness logic.Filed by Fortinet, this record ties underapproximate static analysis explicitly to taint analysis grounded in symbolic execution or incorrectness logic — a narrower technical combination than generic taint-tracking claims filed earlier in the dataset.
Most-cited records in this search
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20070250930A1 | Virtual machine with dynamic data flow analysis | 711 |
| 2 | US20090158430A1 | Method, system and computer program product for detecting at least one of security threats and undesirable co… | 669 |
| 3 | US20110238855A1 | Processing data flows with a data flow processor | 618 |
| 4 | US20200285737A1 | Dynamic cybersecurity detection of sequence anomalies | 541 |
| 5 | US20150309813A1 | A System for analyzing applications in order to find security and quality issues | 435 |
| 6 | US9672355B2 | Automated behavioral and static analysis using an instrumented sandbox and machine learning classification fo… | 420 |
| 7 | US20110214157A1 | Securing a network with data flow processing | 414 |
| 8 | US8881282B1 | Systems and methods for malware attack detection and identification | 395 |
| 9 | US20120331553A1 | Dynamic signature creation and enforcement | 395 |
| 10 | US20090328185A1 | Detecting exploit code in network flows | 364 |
Citation counts accumulate over time and favour older filings; treat this table as a signal of historical influence within the searched corpus, not of which claims matter most today.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Citation counts and representative records. Derived from a Patsnap search on Static Application Security Testing covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three patterns matter most for anyone deciding where to file or build next in SAST: concentration at the top, a cooling but not dead filing curve, and a technology base overwhelmingly classified in one IPC subclass.
Concentration
36.5%
of 816 records held by top 5
The top of the field is dense, the rest is a long tail
The five leading assignees together account for 298 of 816 records (36.5%), and the top 10 reach 383 (46.9%). Beyond that the ranking of 100 companies thins quickly — the leader holds 96 records, fifth place 31, tenth place 14 — meaning most of the ranked assignees hold only a handful of filings each.
Source: assignee ranking, 816 records
Filing momentum
-40%
2021 to 2024 (62 → 37)
Volume peaked in 2020 and has since receded
The 2020 peak of 70 filings was followed by a decline through the last complete year on record; 2021's 62 fell to 37 by 2024. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, 2025 and 2026 numbers are undercounted and should not yet be read as continued decline.
Source: filing trend, 2017-2026
Technology mix
94.1%
of records classed under G06F
Claim space is anchored in general-purpose computing codes
G06F dominates the corpus at 94.1% of 816 records, with H04L (18.6%) and G06N (11.0%) as the largest secondary classes — the latter suggesting a growing overlap between static analysis rule design and AI-based models. Smaller classes like G08B, G09B and H04N indicate SAST techniques reaching into adjacent domains such as alarm systems and educational tooling, though at low volume.
Source: IPC composition, 816 records
Eureka AI Agent
Looking for what nobody has claimed yet?
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to static application security testing, with the prior art for and against each one.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Co-assignee relationships and derived observations. Derived from a Patsnap search on Static Application Security Testing covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Players
Who is filing, and where activity has cooled
The ranked leaders span large diversified technology vendors and enterprise software firms rather than pure-play security startups, and recent-year momentum figures show even the most active historical filers posting little to no activity in the latest year — consistent with the broader publication lag rather than a retreat from the space.
Leader
96
records
A single assignee leads the ranking by a wide margin
The top-ranked assignee holds 96 of 816 records, well ahead of fifth place at 31 and tenth place at 14 — a steep drop-off that marks this as a field with one dominant historical filer rather than several evenly matched ones.
Source: assignee ranking
Recent momentum
0
filings in the latest year for several leaders
Latest-year counts are near zero across the largest historical filers
Several of the most prolific assignees in this dataset show zero filings in the latest year, with year-over-year drops of -100% recorded for at least two. Given the roughly 18-month publication lag, this likely reflects incomplete recent data rather than an actual halt in filing.
Source: recent-year momentum by assignee
Collaboration
2
co-assignee pairs identified
Co-filing is rare in this dataset
Only two co-assignee pairs appear in the data, each linked by a single shared record — one pairing a parent entity with its regional subsidiary, the other with an internal research division. Most filings in this space are single-assignee.
Source: co-assignee pairs
Recent-year filing momentum by assignee
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) | 0 | — |
| Tata Consultancy Services Ltd | 0 | -100% |
| Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC | 0 | -100% |
| Oracle International Corporation | 0 | — |
| Synopsys, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Microsoft Corporation | 0 | — |
| Cyemptive Technologies, Inc. | 0 | — |
| INSIGNIA SOLUTIONS | 0 | — |
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee-level momentum. Derived from a Patsnap search on Static Application Security Testing covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
What's Next
Where to take this next
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, competitive tracking, or identifying open claim space.
Check freedom-to-operate against the top 10
With 46.9% of all 816 records held by ten assignees, any new SAST filing should be checked against this group's claims first, particularly around taint analysis and false-positive reduction techniques.
Run a freedom-to-operate checkWatch the G06N overlap
AI-based computing (G06N) already touches 11.0% of records — a share likely to grow as rule generation and vulnerability triage increasingly draw on machine learning.
Track AI-adjacent filingsDraft around the under-claimed branches
Incremental analysis, path-sensitivity tuning and AI-generated-code source-sink modelling show comparatively thin coverage and may offer clearer claim space than core static analysis.
Explore white space with EurekaSource: Patsnap Eureka. Forward-looking reading of the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Static Application Security Testing covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
FAQ
Common questions about SAST patents
The ranking of 100 assignees in this dataset is led by one company holding 96 of the 816 records in scope, well ahead of the fifth-ranked assignee at 31 and the tenth at 14. The top 5 assignees combined hold 298 records (36.5% of all 816), and the top 10 hold 383 (46.9%). Beyond that group the ranking thins into a long tail of assignees with only a few filings each, so most organisations active in this space hold a modest number of records rather than a dominant position.
Filing volume rose through the late 2010s and peaked in 2020 at 70 filings for the year. On the most recent complete-year comparison, filings fell from 62 in 2021 to 37 in 2024, a -40% change. However, because patent publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 figures in this dataset are still incomplete and should not be read as confirmation of continued decline.
The overwhelming majority of records, 94.1% of the 816 in scope, carry the G06F classification for electric digital data processing. Digital information transmission (H04L) appears on 18.6% of records and AI-based computing (G06N) on 11.0%, marking the two clearest secondary technology fronts. Smaller shares fall under business-process, wireless, alarm, education and video-related classes, reflecting SAST techniques being applied in adjacent domains at much lower volume.
US12034754B2, assigned to Fortinet and granted in 2024, claims an underapproximate static code analysis approach that incorporates taint analysis grounded specifically in symbolic execution or incorrectness logic. This is a narrower technical combination than a generic taint-tracking claim, so it constrains implementations that use that specific analytical basis rather than static analysis broadly. Vendors building taint-based SAST tools should review its claim scope closely if their engine relies on symbolic execution or incorrectness-logic techniques for vulnerability detection.
The technology composition data shows heavy concentration in core static and taint analysis claims under G06F, with much thinner coverage in adjacent areas such as incremental analysis suited to continuous-integration workflows, path-sensitivity tuning aimed at cutting false positives, and source-sink pair modelling for AI-generated code. These branches appear in the dataset but at low density relative to the core claim space, suggesting room for narrower, more defensible filings there rather than in the already-dense general static-analysis claims held by the leading assignees.
Answers are grounded in the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Static Application Security Testing covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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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 inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. 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, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently 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.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company's registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.