Toyota holds the most solid state battery patents
A solid state battery is a battery design that swaps the liquid inside a lithium ion cell for a solid material to carry the charge between its 2 electrodes. A patent family counts one invention, not every copy of a filing. A company that protects the same invention in several countries earns several filings but only 1 family, so a family count does not grow just because a company files in more places than its rivals. PatSnap, a patent analytics firm, counted 17,184 solid state battery patent families filed worldwide from 2017 through 2026. Toyota Motor Corporation holds 3,511 of them, more than any other company. That is about 20% of the entire corpus and about 1.6 times the count held by LG Energy Solution, the next closest company, both figures calculated here from the family counts PatSnap itself states.
Toyota Motor Corporation and Panasonic Intellectual Property Management are Japanese companies. LG Energy Solution, Samsung SDI and Hyundai Motor Company are South Korean companies. Counts are patent families, 1 per invention, not patent applications.
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| Toyota Motor Corporation | 3,511 |
| LG Energy Solution | 2,165 |
| Panasonic Intellectual Property Management | 957 |
| Samsung SDI | 876 |
| Hyundai Motor Company | 830 |
Japan and Korea lead once the count is by company
A patent can be sorted 2 different ways. By filing jurisdiction, the country where a patent is legally filed, PatSnap states the United States leads, followed by Europe and the international filing route run by the World Intellectual Property Organization. By applicant country of origin, the country where the filing company has its headquarters, PatSnap states the leaders are Japanese and Korean companies instead. This article uses company origin, because it lines up directly with the company ranking above. Toyota and Panasonic, both Japanese companies, and LG Energy Solution, Samsung SDI and Hyundai Motor, all 3 South Korean companies, hold most of the corpus between them.
China is filing the fastest right now
Holding the most patents filed on record so far is a different measurement from who is entering the field fastest today. Knowmade, a separate patent analytics firm, tracks the new companies filing a solid state battery patent for the first time each quarter. In the last quarter of 2025, over 190 of these newcomers arrived, and Knowmade found that most of them were companies based in China. In the first quarter of 2026, over 190 newcomers arrived again, and Knowmade found that most of them were based in China too.
A regulator count agrees on direction
The Patent Index for 2024, published by the European Patent Office, points the same direction, though it counts a wider category, battery technology of every kind, not solid state batteries specifically, and only applications filed at that 1 regional office, not a worldwide count. Battery patent filings from Chinese companies at the European Patent Office rose 32.2% in 2024 against 2023, more than double the growth from South Korea, up 15.8%, and from Japan, up 12.9%.
Covers battery technology of every kind, not solid state batteries specifically, and only applications filed at the European Patent Office in 2024 against 2023, not a worldwide count.
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| China | 32.2 |
| South Korea | 15.8 |
| Japan | 12.9 |
A patent count is not a product
None of these figures says who will actually ship a solid state battery first, or whether any filed invention will work at automotive scale. The report itself offers no legal opinion on whether any single patent would hold up if challenged. A patent family count says a company filed for legal protection over an invention, and for some share of the total, was granted it. It does not say where the battery inside a future car will actually come from.