Electric & Hybrid-Electric Aviation Patents: Who Leads, Where Gaps Are 2026
- 38.3% of all 475 records sit with just five assignees, but the next tier of ten reaches only 64.4% combined — concentration at the top with a long tail behind it.
- Filing growth is not accelerating 2021 to 2024 filings fell 16% (32 to 27) even after a 2023 peak of 68, and publication lag means 2025-2026 figures will keep rising as data fills in.
- B64D aircraft equipment carries half the field at 50.9% of records, while battery-specific H01M filings sit at just 8.8% — a gap between systems-level claims and cell-level chemistry.
Filing growth compares 2021 (32 records) with 2024 (27) — 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. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 475 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks 475 published records matching electric and hybrid-electric aviation claim language — aircraft-level electric architectures, flight-control and airframe-sensor integration, and engine-thrust systems tied to electric or hybrid-electric propulsion. The search string pairs aviation-specific electric terms with operational concepts like flight condition, aerodynamic load and structural component, so the corpus skews toward system integration claims rather than isolated battery or motor chemistry.
Coverage runs from 2015 through the 2026-08-31 cut-off. Because publication typically lags filing by roughly 18 months, the most recent one to two years understate actual filing activity and should not be read as a slowdown.
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Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 475-record corpus: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim volume.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Filings rose from 8 in 2017 to a peak of 68 in 2023. The most recent complete comparison — 2021's 32 filings against 2024's 27 — shows a 16% decline over that span; 2025 and 2026 figures are still filling in under publication lag and should not be read as confirming or reversing that trend yet.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
B64D (aircraft equipment) appears in 50.9% of the 475 records, more than any other subclass, followed by B64C (aeroplanes & helicopters) at 26.1%. Power and propulsion classes — H02J, F02C, B60L — each clear double digits, while battery-specific H01M sits at 8.8%, and motor-control H02P and turbine-hardware F01D each hold 7.6%. Because records can carry multiple classes, these shares sum to well over 100% and should be read individually against the 475-record total, not against each other's totals.
Shares are the percentage of the 475 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Electric & Hybrid-Electric Aviation Patent Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about electric & hybrid-electric aviation patent landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited records in the corpus
Aircraft electric power system (US20150061378A1, Nabtesco Corporation, 2015-03-05)
An aircraft electric power system provided in an aircraft includes a predetermined DC power supply bus for supplying electric power to a load. The DC power supply bus is configured to always be connected to two or more types of power supply devices having different forms.Early in the coverage window, this filing frames the DC-bus redundancy pattern that recurs across later aircraft power-architecture claims in the corpus.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20200290742A1 | Hybrid-electric aircraft, and methods, apparatus and systems for facilitating same | 250 |
| 2 | US5960626A | Electric control system for a turbojet engine thrust reverser including an electromechanical drive device and… | 154 |
| 3 | US20040129835A1 | Electric-based secondary power system architectures for aircraft | 150 |
| 4 | US7207521B2 | Electric-based secondary power system architectures for aircraft | 110 |
| 5 | US5466974A | Electric power distribution module for an electric power generation and distribution system | 110 |
| 6 | WO2004037641A2 | Electric-based secondary power system architectures for aircraft | 88 |
| 7 | US6629428B1 | Method of heating for an aircraft electric environmental control system | 79 |
| 8 | US7210653B2 | Electric-based secondary power system architectures for aircraft | 76 |
| 9 | US7950606B2 | Electric-based secondary power system architectures for aircraft | 72 |
| 10 | US20070267540A1 | Electric-based secondary power system architectures for aircraft | 72 |
Citation counts favour older records that have had more time to accumulate citations within this searched corpus — treat them as a signal of influence on the field, not of current technical importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three findings that shape where a new filing is likely to land clean versus where it collides with dense prior art.
The top of the field is dense, the rest is thin
Five assignees hold 182 of the 475 records in scope, and the leader alone accounts for 45. But the gap between fifth place (33) and tenth place (20) narrows quickly, and the ranking runs to 82 companies total — most holding only a handful of records each. A new entrant is more likely to collide with the leaders' claim space than with the long tail.
Systems claims dominate over cell chemistry
Aircraft equipment claims (B64D) cover half the corpus, while battery-specific claims (H01M) sit under 9%. That gap suggests most filers are claiming how electric power integrates into airframes and flight systems, not how the underlying cells or chemistry work — chemistry-level claims may face a less crowded field.
Growth peaked before the most recent complete data
Filings peaked at 68 in 2023 but the clean year-over-year comparison — 2021's 32 against 2024's 27 — shows a 16% pullback. Recent-year momentum by individual assignee also shows several leaders reporting zero filings in the latest year, though publication lag makes 2025-2026 numbers provisional.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to electric & hybrid-electric aviation patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the claim space is still open
The ranked leaders hold a disproportionate share of records, but recent-year momentum shows even the largest filers pulling back — leaving room to look at where nobody has staked a claim yet.
One filer sets the pace, then the field flattens
The leading assignee holds 45 of the 475 records, well ahead of fifth place at 33. That gap, combined with 82 total ranked companies, points to a field where one or two firms built an early lead in aircraft electric power architecture and the rest are competing for a much smaller share each.
Recent-year activity has gone quiet at the top
Several of the most prolific historical filers show zero recorded filings in the latest year, and even the one with recent activity shows a sharp year-over-year drop. Given publication lag, this likely reflects incomplete recent data rather than an actual halt in R&D, but it means competitive-intelligence teams should not read current-year silence as withdrawal.
Joint filings are rare and concentrated
Only six co-assignee pairs appear across the corpus, and the strongest pairing is far more frequent than the others. Co-filing is not the norm in this field — most records carry a single corporate assignee, which makes the few joint-filing relationships worth watching as signals of active technical partnerships.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Archer Aviation Inc | 1 | -93% |
| Hamilton Sundstrand Corp | 0 | — |
| The Boeing Co | 0 | — |
| General Electric Co | 0 | — |
| Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Honeywell International Inc | 0 | — |
| Sikorsky Aircraft Corp | 0 | — |
| GE Aviation Systems LLC | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is defensive clearance or offensive filing strategy.
Map claims against the top assignees' portfolios
With 38.3% of records held by five companies, a freedom-to-operate review should start by pulling those portfolios in full rather than sampling the wider 82-company ranking.
Explore assignee portfolios in EurekaTest draft claims against the under-claimed branches
Battery thermal management and motor-controller fault isolation show thinner direct coverage relative to the dense B64D and B64C clusters — a good starting point for novelty checks.
Run a novelty search in EurekaTrack the most-cited foundational filings
The highest-citation records in this corpus, several dating to the 1990s and 2000s, still anchor claim language in current filings — understanding what they block informs how new claims should be drafted around them.
Review cited-patent chains in EurekaCommon questions about electric and hybrid-electric aviation patents
Among the 82 companies in the ranked assignee list, one firm leads with 45 records, ahead of a fifth-place holder at 33 and a tenth-place holder at 20. The top five assignees combined hold 182 of the 475 records in scope, or 38.3% of the field. That said, the ranking includes many companies with only a handful of filings each, so leadership at the top does not mean the field is closed to new entrants working outside the leaders' specific claim areas.
Filing activity peaked at 68 records in 2023, and the clean comparison between 2021 (32 filings) and 2024 (27 filings) shows a 16% decline over that three-year span. However, patent publication typically lags actual filing by around 18 months, so the 2025 and 2026 figures in this dataset are still incomplete and will revise upward as more records publish. It is premature to call this a permanent slowdown based on the most recent one to two years alone.
Aircraft equipment claims under IPC class B64D appear in 50.9% of the 475 records in scope, making it the largest single category, followed by aeroplane and helicopter structural claims under B64C at 26.1%. Power-supply and grid systems (H02J) and gas-turbine plants (F02C) each clear roughly 18%, while battery-specific claims under H01M sit at only 8.8%. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC classes, these percentages should be read independently against the full record count rather than summed.
The gap between systems-level claims (B64D at 50.9% of records) and cell-level battery chemistry claims (H01M at 8.8%) suggests less-crowded space in areas like battery thermal management integrated with airframe systems, motor-controller fault isolation, and hybrid-electric thrust-reversal control logic. These sit adjacent to dense clusters without carrying the same filing density themselves. A proper freedom-to-operate and novelty search against the specific claim language in those branches is still necessary before assuming the space is genuinely open.
US20150061378A1, assigned to Nabtesco Corporation and filed in 2015, claims an aircraft electric power system built around a DC power supply bus configured to stay connected to two or more differently-formed power supply devices. This establishes a specific redundancy architecture for DC bus power distribution in aircraft. New filers working on aircraft power architectures should check whether their bus-redundancy or multi-source power design overlaps this specific configuration, though the exact scope of what it blocks depends on the granted claim language, not the abstract alone.
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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.