Plume Design filed one family a year until the money showed up
Plume Design holds 200 patent families: 97 granted and 103 published and pending. Filing began in 2012, with the most recent published filing dated 2025-12-01. The families appear in 11 patent offices: United States, Europe, China, Japan and Canada.Patent figures from Google Patents Public Data, reviewed 2026-09-17. Funding: $300M Series F, 2021-10-01.
Between 2012 and 2016, Plume Design's patent record adds up to seven families. Then a $300M round lands in 2021, and the next three years produce 143. The question is whether the portfolio is a record of conviction or a record of capital.
One pulse in October, three hundred million
October 2021. A Series F of $300M, announced on the first of the month. On a timeline it is a single event, and single events are easy to over-read. Money arriving tells you what someone believed about Plume Design in 2021. It does not tell you what Plume Design had been building before, or what it did next.
The useful thing about a patent file is that it is dated twice: once when the idea was claimed, once when the office published it. That gives you a way to put the raise in its place. Hold the date. Everything that follows is measured against it.
Two hundred families, half of them still open
Two hundred families in total. Ninety-seven have granted, drawn solid. One hundred and three are published and pending, drawn thin. A forty-nine percent grant rate looks unremarkable until you ask why so much of the arc is still unexamined. A portfolio that has been filing steadily for a decade should have settled by now. This one has not.
The thin ticks are the tell. They are not failures and they are not stalled cases. They are recent. The balance of solid to thin says that most of this record was written in the last few years, and that the office has not caught up with it yet.
Half of this portfolio has not yet met an examiner.
Nine flat years, then a wall
The first filing is dated 20 September 2012. Then one family in 2013, one in 2014, four in 2015. Nineteen in 2017, then back down: six, nine, seven. By the time the funding marker arrives in 2021, the year contributes nine families. Nine years of work and the whole of it fits inside a single later bar.
Then 2022 returns 41. Then 56 in 2023, the peak. Then 46 in 2024, with the shaded window at the right edge holding filings not yet published. The most recent published filing is dated 1 December 2025. One hundred and forty-three families arrive after the raise. Fifty-seven arrive before it.
The money did not follow the filings. The filings followed the money.
Four names reaching back into the thin years
Citations run backwards. The organisations connected to this portfolio are pointing at what was already granted, which means they are mostly pointing at the fifty-seven families filed before 2022. CISCO TECH INC cites these filings 55 times. ARRIS ENTPR LLC, 50. HUAWEI TECH CO LTD, 38. VIEW INC, 33.
That is the quiet finding. The sparse early years, the single family in 2013, the four in 2015, are the part of the record other people's examiners keep reaching for. The large post-funding block has barely entered the citation record at all, because most of it has not granted yet. Whatever weight this portfolio currently carries was built when almost nobody was filing.
Eleven offices, and four odd European ones
US, EP, CN, JP, CA, TW. Those are the boxes you would expect on a telecommunications file of this size. Then ES, CY, PL, PT and SI: Spain, Cyprus, Poland, Portugal and Slovenia, filed as national cases rather than left to the regional route. Eleven offices in total, PCT set aside.
National filings in individual European states cost money per state and are chosen deliberately. Which is the plainest version of the story: the early record shows a small file that other companies' examiners now cite heavily, and the post-2021 record shows what happens when that file is handed a budget. The conviction predates the capital. The geography does not.
Whether volume converts into the same weight
Fifty-seven families earned the citations. One hundred and forty-three were filed after the cheque cleared, and 103 of the 200 have yet to be examined. The recent titles span wireless network management, a single feeder multi-frequency antenna, automatic validation of wifi sensing applications, and cloud-based AI application management. Four filings, four different problems.
So the portfolio splits cleanly into a proven part and an unproven part, and the unproven part is nearly three times the size. There is nothing wrong with that. It is simply the position: a durable early core, and a very large bet placed on top of it that will not resolve for several more years.
Does the post-funding block carry the same weight?
Three things you might know about Plume Design. None settles the question on its own, because each measures a different stage of the same conversion: filings into grants, grants into citations, citations into position.
An unresolved file
The proven core is fifty-seven families and the rest is pending. Nothing yet says the larger half will match it.
Whether volume converts into the same weight
Do the 2022 to 2024 families grant at the same rate as the pre-funding cohort, or does the grant rate fall as volume rises?
Do citations from other organisations begin to attach to the post-2021 families, or do they stay concentrated on the pre-2022 grants?
Does the national European filing pattern in ES, CY, PL, PT and SI extend to the post-funding families, or was it confined to the early ones?
Does the 2024 figure of 46 hold once the unpublished window fills in, or does the peak of 56 in 2023 turn out to be the top?
Those four answers would tell you whether the raise bought a bigger moat or simply a longer file.
Common questions
How many patents does Plume Design have?
Plume Design holds 200 patent families as reviewed in 2026-09: 97 granted and 103 published and pending.
How many of Plume Design's patents are granted?
97 of the 200 families are granted, or 49 percent. The remaining 103 are published and still under examination.
What technology do Plume Design's patents cover?
Plume Design's claims cluster in wireless networks (H04W), digital communication (H04L) and antennas (H01Q). Recent filing titles include "Systems and methods for wireless network management" and "Single feeder multi-frequency antenna".
Where has Plume Design filed patents?
Plume Design's families appear in 11 patent offices: United States, Europe, China, Japan, Canada and Taiwan.
Which companies file patents in the same areas as Plume Design?
The same CPC groups drew HUAWEI TECH CO LTD, SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO LTD, CISCO TECH INC and LG ELECTRONICS INC over the last five years. Shared classification indicates a common technology field rather than direct competition.
Who cites Plume Design's patents?
Patent records from CISCO TECH INC, ARRIS ENTPR LLC, HUAWEI TECH CO LTD and VIEW INC cite Plume Design's filings. A citation indicates a reference to the work, not evidence of commercial use.
Who invented Plume Design's patents?
250 inventors are named across the portfolio. The most frequently named is VO LIEM HIEU DINH. Inventor names do not establish ownership, which is determined by assignment records.
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