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Run your analysis now →https://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/rd-blog/distributed-propulsion-and-boundary-layer-ingestion-patent-landscape/ · Patsnap · data cut-off 2026-07-31 · downloaded from the live page
Aviation Electric Propulsion · Patent LandscapeDistributed Propulsion and Boundary Layer Ingestion Patents
- Filing peaked in 2019 at 27 records and has settled into a lower, steadier band since — 2021 to 2024 is down 10%, not a collapse but a plateau after the early land-grab.
- One assignee sits well clear of the field at 64 records against a fifth-place figure of 11, with a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants behind it.
- Claims cluster hard in aircraft equipment and airframe classes B64D and B64C together cover most of the 223 records in scope, while motor-specific and pump-specific claims stay comparatively thin.
223
Published Records
-10%
Filing Growth 2021→2024
US
Leading Jurisdiction
26
Active Filers Ranked
Filing growth compares 2021 (10 records) with 2024 (9) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field.
Published byPatsnap Research··7 min readSourced from Patsnap Eureka
Overview
What this landscape covers
Distributed propulsion and boundary layer ingestion (BLI) cover aircraft architectures that spread thrust across multiple propulsors, or place a propulsor where it re-energises airflow already slowed by the airframe, rather than in clean freestream air. The patent activity in scope runs from 2015 through mid-2026 and spans 223 published records, filed under search terms tied to inlet distortion tolerance, fan pressure ratio, wing blowing, propulsor spacing, differential thrust control and installed propulsive efficiency — the specific engineering levers that separate a workable BLI installation from a paper concept.
The mix of assignees ranges from full engine manufacturers filing around gas-turbine and hybrid-electric architectures to smaller, propulsion-focused entrants filing narrower fluidic and fan-embedding concepts. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the most recent one to two years in any trend line here will read lower than the true filing rate once the backlog clears.
Filing activity and technology composition, 2015-2026
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee ranking and totals. Derived from a Patsnap search on Distributed Propulsion and Boundary Layer Ingestion covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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The data
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 223-record set: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses the claims actually sit in.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Filings rose from 12 in 2017 to a peak of 27 in 2019, then eased back. The 2021-to-2024 span — the last full years available before publication lag distorts the count — shows a 10% decline (10 to 9), a plateau rather than a retreat. 2025 and 2026 figures are still filling in and should not be read as a downturn.
IPC subclass composition
B64D (aircraft equipment) and B64C (aeroplanes & helicopters) between them touch most of the 223 records, confirming that most filings are pitched at the airframe-integration level rather than at the propulsor hardware alone. F02K and F02C carry the jet- and gas-turbine-specific claims, at 33.2% and 26.5% of records respectively, while H02K (electric motors) sits at 11.7% and F04D (pumps) at 4.5% — the more narrowly mechanical branches remain comparatively lightly claimed.
Shares are the percentage of the 223 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Distributed Propulsion and Boundary Layer Ingestion covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.
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Most-cited records and a representative claim
Representative filing
US10549845B2 — Dedicated fans for boundary layer ingestion
RTX CORPORATION
A propulsion system for an aircraft including at least two main gas turbine engines and a plurality of dedicated boundary layer ingestion fans. The propulsion system is arranged such that a combined thrust produced by the boundary layer ingestion fans is less than 20 percent of a total thrust of the main engines and the boundary layer ingestion fans. The boundary layer ingestion fans are controllable and selectively turned off at lower speeds.Filed by RTX Corporation, granted 2020-02-04.
Highest-citation records in scope
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20200290742A1 | Hybrid-electric aircraft, and methods, apparatus and systems for facilitating same | 249 |
| 2 | EP3048042A1 | Gas-electric propulsion system for an aircraft | 102 |
| 3 | US20160214727A1 | Gas-electric propulsion system for an aircraft | 89 |
| 4 | US20180134400A1 | System and methods for implementing regional air transit network using hybrid-electric aircraft | 87 |
| 5 | US20170057621A1 | Fluidic propulsive system and thrust and lift generator for aerial vehicles | 84 |
| 6 | US20160010589A1 | Two-part gas turbine engine | 84 |
| 7 | US20020178990A1 | Propulsion of underwater vehicles using differential and vectored thrust | 84 |
| 8 | US9751614B1 | Aeroelastic wing shaping using distributed propulsion | 76 |
| 9 | US20200407060A1 | Novel aircraft design using tandem wings and a distributed propulsion system | 54 |
| 10 | US20170297727A1 | Propulsion engine for an aircraft | 51 |
Citation counts inside a searched corpus favour older filings; treat them as a signal of influence on later filers, not as a ranking of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Citation counts and representative records. Derived from a Patsnap search on Distributed Propulsion and Boundary Layer Ingestion covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three findings that shape where a new filing has room, and where it walks into dense prior art.
Concentration
64 vs. 11
leader vs. fifth place
One filer, then a steep drop-off
The leading assignee holds 64 records in a 26-company ranking where fifth place holds 11 and tenth place holds 7. That gap suggests one organisation has built a broad claim thicket around its core architecture, while the rest of the field files in narrower, more specific increments.
Ranking covers 26 assignees, not a top-50 or top-100 cut.
Filing trend
-10%
2021 to 2024
A plateau, not a decline
Filings fell from 10 in 2021 to 9 in 2024 — a modest pullback after the 2019 peak of 27, not a collapse. Because 2025 and 2026 filings are still being published, any apparent drop-off in those years is a lag artefact, not a signal that interest has cooled.
2024 is the most recent year treated as complete.
Technology mix
72.6%
of records touch B64D
Airframe integration dominates the claim set
Aircraft equipment (B64D) and aeroplane/helicopter classes (B64C) between them cover most of the 223 records, meaning the crowded ground is system-level integration — inlet design, nacelle placement, control logic — rather than the electric machine or pump hardware itself.
Classes overlap; shares are against the 223-record total, not against each other.
Eureka AI Agent
Looking for what nobody has claimed yet?
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to distributed propulsion and boundary layer ingestion, with the prior art for and against each one.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Co-assignee relationships and derived observations. Derived from a Patsnap search on Distributed Propulsion and Boundary Layer Ingestion covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Players
Who is filing, and where the field is still open
A ranking with one clear leader, a mid-tier of engine and airframe manufacturers, and a long tail of narrowly focused entrants — plus several sub-areas that show almost no dedicated filing activity.
Leader
64 records
top-ranked assignee
Broad claim coverage from the top filer
The leading assignee's 64 records span multiple filing years and architecture variants, consistent with a strategy of protecting a core platform across successive design iterations rather than a single breakthrough filing.
Recent-year momentum for this assignee has flattened, per the momentum data.
Mid-tier
11 records
fifth-place assignee
Engine and airframe manufacturers hold the middle ranks
Below the leader, established aerospace propulsion manufacturers occupy the middle of the ranking, typically filing around gas-turbine hybridisation and BLI-fan integration rather than standalone electric-motor claims.
Several of these assignees also appear together in co-assignee pairs, indicating shared internal filing programmes across related corporate entities.
Long tail
7 records
tenth-place assignee
A long tail of single-architecture filers
Beyond the top ranks, most of the 26 listed assignees hold only a handful of records each, often tied to one specific fluidic-propulsion or fan-embedding concept rather than a broad platform.
Momentum data shows several of these entrants at zero filings in the latest year, consistent with early-stage or one-off programmes.
Recent-year filing momentum by assignee
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Whisper Aero Inc | 1 | 0% |
| Jetoptera Inc | 0 | -100% |
| General Electric Co | 0 | -100% |
| Rolls-Royce plc | 0 | — |
| Duxion Motors Inc | 0 | — |
| Rolls-Royce Corp | 0 | — |
| Rolls-Royce North American Technologies Inc | 0 | — |
| ZUNUM AERO INC | 0 | — |
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee-level momentum. Derived from a Patsnap search on Distributed Propulsion and Boundary Layer Ingestion covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
What's next
Where to take this next
The dataset points to a few concrete next steps for anyone deciding where to file or where to watch.
Track the leader's control-logic claims
With 64 records already filed, the top assignee's newest claims are likely to sit in control and operating-mode logic rather than base architecture — that is where a competitor filing needs to check for overlap first.
Explore assignee filingsTest the under-claimed branches for freedom to operate
Propulsor spacing, wing-blowing integration and differential thrust control show comparatively light dedicated filing against the airframe-integration core, which is where a narrowly drafted first claim has the best odds of standing.
Run a white space searchSource: Patsnap Eureka. Forward-looking reading of the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Distributed Propulsion and Boundary Layer Ingestion covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
FAQ
Common questions on this landscape
Distributed propulsion refers to spreading thrust across multiple smaller propulsors instead of one or two large engines, while boundary layer ingestion (BLI) specifically means placing a propulsor where it draws in air already slowed by the airframe surface, recovering some of that lost energy. Many of the 223 records in this dataset combine both ideas, for example distributing several BLI fans along a fuselage or wing. The search terms used to build this set — inlet distortion tolerance, fan pressure ratio, propulsor spacing and related terms — target the specific engineering problems that arise once you try to build either concept, not just the general idea.
The ranking covers 26 assignees, with the leading company holding 64 records against 11 for the fifth-ranked assignee and 7 for the tenth — a steep drop after the top position. That gap indicates one organisation has filed broadly across design variants of its core architecture, while most other assignees hold only a handful of records tied to specific concepts. The full ranking is rendered separately on this page; treat it as the complete list returned for this search, not a top-50 or top-100 cut.
Filing peaked in 2019 at 27 records and has since settled lower, with the 2021-to-2024 span showing a 10% decline from 10 to 9 filings — a plateau rather than a steep drop. Figures for 2025 and 2026 are still incomplete because publication typically lags actual filing by around 18 months, so those years will read low regardless of true filing activity. Treat 2024 as the most recent year with a reasonably complete count.
Airframe-level integration claims (IPC classes B64D and B64C) dominate the dataset, together touching the large majority of the 223 records, while classes tied to the electric motor itself (H02K, 11.7%) and to non-positive-displacement pump hardware (F04D, 4.5%) are comparatively thin. Sub-areas such as propulsor spacing optimisation, wing-blowing circulation control and differential thrust control logic also show lighter dedicated filing relative to the airframe-integration core. These are reasonable areas to search for freedom to operate, though a formal clearance search is still needed before relying on that gap.
US10549845B2, assigned to RTX Corporation and granted in 2020, claims a propulsion system combining at least two main gas turbine engines with dedicated, controllable boundary layer ingestion fans whose combined thrust stays under 20 percent of total system thrust, and which can be selectively switched off at lower speeds. That is a fairly specific thrust-ratio and control-mode claim, not a claim over BLI fans in general, so designs outside that thrust-share threshold or without the selective shut-off feature have room to argue around it. Anyone building a dedicated-fan BLI system with a main-engine pairing should still check this claim's exact language against their own thrust split and control logic before assuming clearance.
Answers are grounded in the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Distributed Propulsion and Boundary Layer Ingestion covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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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.