Legal and regulatory intelligence company LexisNexis claimed Huawei held the edge in a highly-competitive 5G patent race involving big names including Qualcomm and Samsung.

In the latest edition of an annual report on patent portfolios and related market values, the company stated 5G deals of between $1 million and $100 million are negotiated weekly, though added it is difficult to define volumes and market shares due to a lack of transparency.

LexisNexis examined which standard-essential patents are best positioned to dominate in the burgeoning 5G market, ranking Huawei, Qualcomm and Samsung as the top three, respectively, in terms of quantity and quality.

Ericsson, Nokia, LG Electronics, ZTE, Oppo, NTT and InterDigital rounded out the top ten.

LexisNexis stated experts classified 10 per cent to 20 per cent of declared 5G standard-essential patents as truly essential.

It ranked the top-50 patent vendors through an in-house assessment of patent values along with 3GPP standards contributions and “pure” declaration counts.

Huawei, Ericsson, and Nokia were among the strongest contributors to 5G standards.

Globally, the US was the top region with more than 28,000 5G patent families granted, followed by China on around 26,000 and Europe with almost 15,000.

As of July 2023, the number of declared 5G patent families had grown to more than 60,000 with about 30,000 granted in Europe or the US, increasing at a rate of about 5,000 per annum.