Airborne Software Certification Patents: Leaders & Gaps 2026
- A narrow field with a short bench. 13 ranked companies cover the whole assignee list for this search, with the leader holding just 3 records and a long tail of single-filing entrants below fifth place.
- Filing is concentrated in software architecture, not comms or ATC. 75.0% of the 20 records in scope sit in G06F (electric digital data processing), against 20.0% in H04L and 15.0% in G08G — certification claims are being written around processing and partitioning, not around the traffic-control or transmission layers.
- Activity peaked in 2023, then the count drops off. The trend hit 6 filings in 2023 before falling toward the present; the most recent year is structurally undercounted because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months.
What this landscape covers
This dataset tracks patent filings at the intersection of airborne software qualification standards — DO-178B and DO-178C — and the technical mechanisms used to satisfy them: design assurance level classification, requirement traceability, structural coverage analysis, tool qualification, execution time analysis and formal verification. It spans records published between 2015 and mid-2026, drawing from a search string that ties certification vocabulary directly to these compliance techniques rather than to avionics hardware generally.
The 20 records in scope are filed across five receiving offices, led by the United States, with Europe, China, WIPO and India each contributing a smaller slice. That spread points to a field where certification-adjacent IP is filed close to where flight-critical software is built and where type-certificate holders operate, rather than being pursued as a broad multi-jurisdiction defensive play.
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Filing trend and technology mix
Two views of the same 20-record set: annual filing counts, and how records distribute across IPC subclasses. Because a single record can carry more than one IPC class, the composition shares below add up to more than 100% of the record total.
Filing trend, 2017–2026
Filings were flat at the start of the window, rose to a peak of 6 in 2023, and have since tapered off. Treat the final one or two years as understated: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so recent activity has not fully surfaced yet.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
G06F (electric digital data processing) covers 75.0% of the 20 records, far ahead of H04L (digital information transmission) at 20.0% and G08G (traffic control systems) at 15.0%. Certification patenting is concentrated on how software is structured, verified and partitioned inside the processing stack, not on the communication links or traffic-management layers around it.
Shares are the percentage of the 20 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Airborne Software Certification with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about airborne software certification and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited records in this landscape
Method and system for managing software applications (US20240403123A1, Rockwell Collins)
A multi-core processing system where a management core allocates tasks across processing cores sharing a common resource, with a contention assessment module monitoring resource contention and a processing suspension module able to halt processing on a given core based on task criticality.Filed 2024-12-05 — describes runtime contention management and criticality-based suspension across a multi-core avionics processing architecture.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | WO2011031328A2 | Systems and methods for management of projects for development of embedded systems | 44 |
| 2 | US20110219458A1 | Secure avionics equipment and associated method of making secure | 13 |
| 3 | US20240005802A1 | Aircraft conflict detection and resolution | 4 |
| 4 | US8527714B2 | Secure avionics equipment and associated method of making secure | 4 |
| 5 | EP4300466A1 | Aircraft conflict detection and resolution | 3 |
| 6 | US12254778B2 | Aircraft conflict detection and resolution | 1 |
| 7 | CN114721734A | 一种机载软件形式化验证方法 | 1 |
Citation counts inside a searched corpus favour older filings, since they have had more time to accumulate citations — read this as a signal of influence on the field, not of current technical importance.
Patent titles are shown in the language they were filed in, not translated, so that each record stays verifiable against the original filing — a translated title will not match in Eureka or in any national register. Publication numbers are shown where the record carries one (7 of 7 rows); clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three patterns stand out once the ranking, trend and IPC composition are read together.
No single company owns this space
The leader holds only 3 records, fifth place holds 2, and tenth place also holds 2 — this is a field of small portfolios rather than one dominant blocker. A new entrant is not filing against an entrenched monopoly; it is filing into a crowded set of modest, comparable positions.
Processing and partitioning claims dominate
Three-quarters of records touch G06F, the electric digital data processing class, while H04L and G08G each cover a smaller slice. Claim space around structural coverage, execution time analysis and tool qualification sits inside the processing architecture, not the communications or traffic-control periphery.
Activity has already crested once
Filing rose to 6 records in 2023 and has since declined toward the present. With growth not computable from fewer than four complete post-lag years, the safest reading is that the field had a filing wave rather than a steady climb — worth checking against 2024-2025 publications as they surface.
Co-filing is limited and individual-linked
Only 4 co-assignee pairs appear, and the strongest repeat pairing links named individuals rather than two large corporate assignees. This is a field where most records are filed by a single assignee, with joint filings the exception rather than the norm.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to airborne software certification, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is active, and where the ground is open
The ranked list covers established avionics and tooling suppliers alongside individual inventors and one university, spread thin across a small record count.
A modest lead, not a moat
The top-ranked assignee holds only 3 of the 20 records in scope. That is enough to matter but not enough to foreclose the field — the gap to fifth place (2 records) is a single filing.
Verification-tool vendors sit inside the same ranking as airframe and systems suppliers
Companies whose business is structural coverage and static analysis tooling appear alongside large avionics integrators in this ranking, reflecting that certification IP is claimed by both the standard's implementers and the tool builders who support compliance work.
A single academic assignee among corporate filers
One university appears in the ranking, a reminder that formal verification and execution-time analysis techniques underlying DO-178C compliance are still active research topics, not solely industrial trade secrets.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Honeywell International Inc | 0 | — |
| General Electric Co | 0 | — |
| Ansys, Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Safran Electronics & Defense SAS | 0 | — |
| Rockwell Collins, Inc. | 0 | — |
| East China Normal University | 0 | — |
| VOGTENBERGER PHILIPPE | 0 | — |
| STCLAIR WILLIAM GRYFFYTH | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to specific next checks rather than a single conclusion.
Watch the 2024-2025 publication gap
The 2023 peak may not be the true high point — filings from the last 18 months have not fully published. Re-run this search in six months before concluding the field has cooled.
Explore the trend in EurekaMap claims inside the G06F cluster
With three-quarters of records in one IPC subclass, the differentiating detail is in claim scope, not classification. A claim-level read of the processing-architecture filings will show which sub-mechanisms are actually contested.
Run a claim comparison in EurekaCheck the under-claimed branches directly
Execution time analysis for multi-core systems and tool qualification automation show thin coverage relative to the core cluster — worth a targeted freedom-to-operate check before committing claim language there.
Search white space in EurekaCommon questions on airborne software certification patents
This dataset's assignee ranking returns 13 companies covering the full set of 20 records in scope — it is not a top-50 or top-100 cut, it is the entire ranked list the search produces. The leader holds only 3 records, and the count drops to 2 by fifth place, so no single company controls a large share of the filings. Anyone evaluating freedom to operate should treat this as a fragmented field of small portfolios rather than one with a dominant blocker.
Three-quarters of the 20 records in scope (75.0%) fall under G06F, the electric digital data processing IPC subclass, covering claims tied to software architecture, partitioning and processing management. H04L (digital information transmission) and G08G (traffic control systems) appear in smaller shares, 20.0% and 15.0% respectively. Because records can carry multiple IPC classes, these figures overlap rather than summing to 100%, but the pattern is clear: certification IP concentrates on the processing stack itself, not the surrounding communications or traffic-management systems.
The trend shows a peak of 6 filings in 2023, with activity tapering in the years after. A reliable growth rate cannot be calculated here because fewer than four complete years remain once publication lag is accounted for, and lag runs roughly 18 months from filing to publication. That means the most recent one to two years in the data almost certainly understate real filing activity, and the apparent decline should be treated as provisional until later publications catch up.
US20240403123A1, filed by Rockwell Collins, describes a multi-core processing system where a management core allocates tasks, a contention assessment module monitors shared-resource contention, and a processing suspension module can halt lower-priority processing based on task criticality. For teams building DO-178C-compliant multi-core software, this claims specific runtime contention-handling and criticality-based suspension mechanisms, which is a live design-around consideration for anyone using similar dynamic core-management schemes in certified systems. It does not block static, offline-scheduled multi-core approaches that avoid runtime contention assessment altogether.
The IPC composition shows heavy concentration in G06F and comparatively thin coverage in specific sub-mechanisms such as execution time analysis for multi-core scheduling, automated tool qualification evidence generation, and structural coverage analysis for model-based code generation. These are named directly in the certification standards but are not densely claimed in this 20-record set. A first claim in these areas would need to tie a specific automated technique to a specific DO-178C compliance artifact, rather than claiming the broad certification process itself.
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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.