The corpus in scope covers 575 records that combine an AFDX network, ARINC 664 or time-triggered Ethernet architecture with a deterministic-networking mechanism such as virtual link configuration, bandwidth allocation gap control, frame jitter management, redundancy management, frame scheduling or traffic policing. Coverage runs from 2015 through the 2026-07-31 data cut-off. The leading filers are aerospace OEMs and avionics integrators, with the top five assignees holding 69.9% of all records, so most of the enforceable ground sits with a small number of established players rather than being spread across the industry.

The ranked list returns 66 companies, and it is concentrated at the top: the leading assignee holds 109 records, more than three times the fifth-place figure of 28. Aerospace primes, avionics system integrators and specialists in real-time Ethernet appear repeatedly among the top ranks, while the remainder of the ranked list files only occasionally. Anyone assessing competitive risk in this space should focus freedom-to-operate work on the top ten assignees, who together hold 83.7% of the 575 records in scope.

Filing activity peaked in 2018 at 45 published records and has declined since; the count fell from 24 in 2021 to 5 in 2024, a -79% change over that span. However, patent publication typically lags the actual filing date by roughly 18 months, so the 2025 and 2026 figures in any dataset are still filling in and should not be read as confirming a continued decline. The safest reading is that filing activity cooled meaningfully through 2024, with the most recent one to two years genuinely unknown rather than genuinely low.