Aircraft Ice Protection Patents: Leaders, Trends & White Space 2026
- Filing peaked in 2021 at 9 records and has not returned to that level since, suggesting the core electrothermal and hot-air claim space filled early in this window.
- The most-cited record dates to 1991 US5011098A still carries 154 citations, well ahead of anything filed in the last decade — influence in this field skews old.
- Filing is split across six receiving offices with the US and EPO each near 20 records and China, Canada, the UK and India trailing well behind — protection is not yet global by default.
What the dataset covers
This landscape covers 59 patent families filed or published between 2015 and mid-2026 that combine aircraft-specific ice protection language with core IPC classification under B64D15. The search string pairs system-level terms — anti-icing system, de-icing system, aircraft ice protection — with claim-level mechanisms: electrothermal ice protection, electro-impulse de-icing, ice detection and hydrophobic anti-icing. That combination narrows the set to records where ice protection is the subject of the claims, not a passing mention in a broader airframe filing.
Almost every record classifies under B64D (aircraft equipment), with secondary classification spread thinly across electric heating circuits, turbine and gas-turbine plants, and temperature measurement. That spread points to a field where the airframe integration problem is well documented but the underlying heating, detection and control components are still classified as general-purpose technology borrowed from other domains.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Publication figures for the most recent one to two years understate actual filing activity, since publication typically lags filing by around 18 months. Read the tail of any trend line with that lag in mind.
A flat-to-declining filing curve since 2021
Filings were absent in 2017, climbed to a peak of 9 in 2021, then fell back — 2022 sits at just 1. Read alongside the publication lag, this looks less like abandonment of the field and more like a plateau: the easy claim space around core thermal and detection methods was staked out by the early 2020s, and later filers are working narrower, harder-to-claim variations.
B64D dominates; supporting art is thin and scattered
Every record in this set touches B64D (aircraft equipment), the expected anchor class. Behind it sit small clusters in H05B (electric heating circuits, 8 records), B64C (aeroplanes and helicopters, 4) and F01D/F02C (turbine and gas-turbine plants, 7 combined). Vehicle-electronics classes B60L and B60R, along with temperature-measurement class G01K, appear only twice each — a sign that ice-detection sensing and automotive-style thermal control have not yet been heavily cross-filed into aviation-specific claims.
Shares are the percentage of the 59 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Aircraft Ice Protection Technology Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about aircraft ice protection technology landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited prior art in this space
Aircraft ice protection optimization based on ice-detection input (US20130284856A1)
The system pairs an ice protection device with an onboard power source, a controller on the supply line, and an optimizer that issues operation-optimizing instructions to that controller. An ice detector feeds a live ice-condition input into the optimizer, closing the loop between detection and power delivery rather than running the protection device on a fixed schedule.Filed by Goodrich Corporation, published 2013-10-31 — now within the highest-cited tier of this dataset at 26 citations.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5011098A | Thermal anti-icing system for aircraft | 154 |
| 2 | US6267328B1 | Hot air injection for swirling rotational anti-icing system | 111 |
| 3 | US6354538B1 | Passive control of hot air injection for swirling rotational type anti-icing system | 88 |
| 4 | US20100123044A1 | Aircraft Ice Protection System | 34 |
| 5 | US20130284856A1 | Aircraft ice protection optimization based on ice-detection input | 26 |
| 6 | US7556221B2 | Aircraft ice protection method | 23 |
| 7 | US20040245395A1 | Aircraft ice protection system | 15 |
| 8 | CN113562182A | SLD环境前缘溢流区冰防护组件 | 13 |
| 9 | US9555894B2 | Aircraft ice protection optimization based on ice-detection input | 10 |
| 10 | GB2447374A | Modular aircraft control system and method | 10 |
Citation counts are drawn from the searched corpus and favour older filings; treat them as a measure of influence on later drafting, not of current commercial relevance.
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. Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers say about the field
Three patterns stand out once families, geography and citation weight are separated from raw document counts.
Activity plateaued after 2021
The filing curve rises from zero in 2017 to a peak of 9 in 2021, then drops to 1 by the 2022 midpoint. Combined with the usual 18-month publication lag, this reads as a maturing claim space rather than a dying one — but it is not a growth market on this evidence.
Influence sits with 1990s-era thermal art
The top three most-cited records — including US5011098A and the swirling rotational anti-icing pair US6267328B1 and US6354538B1 — predate this filing window by two decades or more. New filers are still drafting around foundational hot-air and thermal architectures.
Protection concentrates in two offices
The US and EPO together account for the large majority of receiving-office activity, with China, Canada, the UK and India each in single digits. Filers protecting ice protection technology outside these two offices are still the exception rather than the rule.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to aircraft ice protection technology landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the field is thin
Co-assignment in this dataset is sparse — only three pairs appear at all, each with a single shared filing — which suggests most work here is done in-house rather than through joint development agreements.
No assignee shows recent-year growth
Every assignee tracked for recent-year momentum, from established airframe and systems suppliers to smaller electronics firms, shows zero filings in the latest year, with at least one recording a -100% year-on-year drop. That is consistent with the broader plateau in the filing trend rather than any single company retreating from the field.
Filing is largely solo, not joint
The strongest co-assignment links pair a named inventor with a helicopter manufacturer, and one pairs a commercial aircraft maker with its affiliated design institute. Beyond these three pairs, the dataset shows no dense collaboration network.
Early movers still anchor the art
The highest-cited records in this set were filed well before 2015, meaning the companies behind them shaped the vocabulary and baseline architecture that later filings, including this decade's, are drafted against.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| BFGoodrich Corporation | 0 | -100% |
| Bell Helicopter Textron Inc. | 0 | — |
| The Boeing Company | 0 | — |
| Rohr, Inc. | 0 | — |
| General Electric Company | 0 | — |
| Ultra Electronics Limited | 0 | — |
| Short Brothers plc | 0 | — |
| Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China, Ltd. (COMAC) | 0 | — |
Where to take this
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, sourcing, or identifying open claim space.
Check freedom-to-operate against the cited core
Before drafting new ice-detection or power-optimization claims, review the most-cited records in this set — particularly the thermal and swirling rotational anti-icing family — since later filings are likely drafted around them.
Run a freedom-to-operate check in EurekaTrack assignee momentum before assuming a leader
With every tracked assignee at zero filings in the latest year, ranking by historical family count alone can be misleading; a momentum-adjusted view is more useful for deciding who is actively investing.
Build an assignee momentum view in EurekaDraft into the thin branches, not the crowded core
Sensor fusion for ice detection and hybrid coating-plus-electrothermal approaches show far fewer filings than the core hot-air and thermal methods, making them a more promising target for a first claim.
Explore white space in EurekaQuestions practitioners ask about this field
The most-cited records in this space are decades old: US5011098A covering a thermal anti-icing system carries 154 citations, and the swirling rotational hot-air injection pair US6267328B1 and US6354538B1 carry 111 and 88 respectively. These older filings still anchor how later ice protection claims are drafted, since most newer patents in the dataset cite back to this thermal and hot-air architecture. A freedom-to-operate review in this field should start with these records rather than with the most recent filings.
Based on this dataset, filing activity peaked in 2021 at 9 records and had fallen to just 1 by the 2022 midpoint, with 2017 showing zero filings. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the last one to two years understate real activity, but the overall shape is flat to declining rather than a growth curve. That points to a claim space where the core methods are largely staked out and remaining activity is narrower and more incremental.
The dataset tracks recent-year momentum across a group of assignees including established airframe and systems suppliers, a turbine specialist, a helicopter manufacturer and smaller electronics firms — but every one of them shows zero filings in the latest tracked year, with at least one recording a -100% year-on-year change. This means no single company is currently pulling ahead on fresh filings; leadership in this field is currently defined by historical family count and citation weight rather than recent momentum.
Secondary IPC classes tied to ice detection sensing, electric heating circuit integration, and rotorcraft-specific applications show far fewer records than the core B64D aircraft-equipment class, suggesting these branches are comparatively under-claimed. Hybrid approaches that combine electrothermal heating with hydrophobic coatings, and closed-loop power-optimization architectures that tie ice detection directly to power delivery, also show thin coverage relative to standalone thermal or hot-air methods. These are reasonable areas to investigate for a first claim rather than competing directly in the crowded thermal-architecture core.
US20130284856A1, assigned to Goodrich Corporation and published in 2013, describes an aircraft ice protection system that closes the loop between detection and power delivery: an ice detector feeds a live ice-condition input into an optimizer, which issues operation-optimizing instructions to a controller regulating the power supply line to the ice protection device. It sits among the higher-cited records in this dataset at 26 citations. Anyone drafting a detection-driven, power-optimized ice protection control loop should review this claim scope closely before finalizing architecture.
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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.