CPC technology class · H03

H03M — Coding

Coding; decoding; code conversion in general. 21,338 US utility patents granted 2015–2025, with the leading assignees and year-by-year filing trajectory.

21,338
US patents granted
H03
Parent CPC class
20
Active assignees
+15%
5-yr velocity
Top assignee: SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD. (1,180 patents)

CPC subclass H03M — CODING; DECODING; CODE CONVERSION IN GENERAL — covers 21,338 US utility patents granted between 2015 and 2025 according to USPTO PatentsView records. This subclass sits within the broader CPC class H03 (ELECTRONIC CIRCUITRY), one of roughly 250 top-level technology categories in the Cooperative Patent Classification system jointly maintained by the USPTO and the European Patent Office. At the subclass level, four-character codes like H03M give the most practical resolution for tracking a specific technology domain without losing sight of adjacent filings. Every grant here has been classified by a USPTO examiner based on the technical disclosure in the patent specification.

The competitive landscape in H03M is shaped by 20 distinct companies actively filing in this space. SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD. leads with 1,180 patents, followed by Intel Corporation at 27,498 grants and QUALCOMM Incorporated at 30,354. Concentration at the top of the leaderboard indicates whether this technology area is dominated by a handful of incumbents or fragmented across many filers — a useful signal for investors evaluating competitive moats and for product teams mapping freedom-to-operate risk.

Filing trajectory matters as much as static counts. The yearly series on this page plots grants from 2015 through 2025, highlighting whether innovation in H03M is accelerating, plateauing, or cooling. Technology areas with rising post-2020 activity often reflect emerging markets or new platform shifts, while declining filings can signal mature domains where incremental improvement has slowed. Researchers, licensing professionals, and competitive-intelligence teams use these patterns — together with the top-assignee distribution — to decide where to invest, where to license, and where to avoid entanglement. All counts on this page come directly from USPTO PatentsView and reflect US granted utility patents only.

Is H03M innovation accelerating?

US utility-patent grants per year in H03M, 2015–2025 — recent five years are up 15% versus 2015–2019.

1,0001,5002,0002,500 20152016201720182019202020212022202320242025 1,201

Who leads H03M?

The 12 most active assignees in CODING; DECODING; CODE CONVERSION IN GENERAL — wider bars mean more grants

patents

What this shows Samsung is the most active filer in H03M, holding 1,180 of the 21,338 patents in this class. Concentration at the top signals how contestable this technology area is for new entrants.

Source USPTO PatentsView — granted utility patents As of 2015–2025 grant years
View data table

About This Class

CPC subclass H03M belongs to class H03.

21,338 patents were granted in this class between 2015 and 2025.

20 companies actively patent in this space.

Classification System

Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) is a hierarchical patent classification system used by the USPTO and EPO.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is CPC class H03M?
CPC subclass H03M covers CODING; DECODING; CODE CONVERSION IN GENERAL. It belongs to CPC class H03 (ELECTRONIC CIRCUITRY). The Cooperative Patent Classification is a hierarchical system used by the USPTO and European Patent Office to categorize patents by technology.
How many patents have been filed in H03M?
21,338 US utility patents were granted in CPC subclass H03M between 2015 and 2025, based on USPTO PatentsView data.
Which company holds the most patents in H03M?
SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD. leads H03M with 1,180 patents, making it the most active assignee in this technology area.
How is patent data for H03M collected?
Patent data comes from USPTO PatentsView, a public research dataset maintained by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. It covers all US granted utility patents and assigns CPC codes based on the technology described in each patent.
What is the difference between CPC class and subclass?
A CPC class (e.g., H03) is a broad technology category. Subclasses like H03M provide finer granularity within that category. PlainPatent organizes data at the subclass level (4-character codes) for the most useful view of technology domains.

Learn More

Explore the patent dataset

Data sourced from USPTO PatentsView — official U.S. government patent data. See our methodology for computation details. Retrieved and formatted by PlainPatent Editorial