Electromechanical Flight Control Actuators: Patent Landscape
43.1% of all 283 records sit with just five assignees, and 66.1% with ten — a field concentrated at the top with a long tail below. Filings ran at 26 in 2017 and peaked at 29 in 2018. The clearest complete-year comparison in the dataset is 2021 to 2024, where filings dropped from 20 to 4 — an 80% decline. Treat 2025 and 2026 figures as provisional given publication lag, not as confirmation the decline continued.
- 1GOODRICH ACTUATION SYST38
- 2THE BOEING CO33
- 3SAFRAN ELECTRONICS & DEFENSE (FR)19
- 4BRITAX ROMER KINDERSICHERHEIT GMBH17
- 5HAPTX INC15
See the full electromechanical flight control actuators analysis in Eureka
- The complete ranking, not just the top five
- Every IPC branch with its share of the corpus
- The most-cited records, and where claim space is still thin
Common questions about this landscape
Who are the leading patent holders in electromechanical flight control actuators?
The assignee ranking for this dataset covers 47 companies, and it is a concentrated field: the top five hold 43.1% of the 283 records in scope, and the top ten hold 66.1%. The single leading assignee holds 38 records, well ahead of the fifth-ranked company at 15 and the tenth at 12. Below that top group, the remaining assignees mostly hold single-digit filing counts, so a new entrant with even a handful of well-targeted filings can move into the ranked list.
Why did electromechanical actuator patent filings drop after 2018?
Filing volume peaked at 29 in 2018 and had fallen to 4 by 2024, an 80% decline from the 2021 figure of 20. This does not necessarily mean R&D activity itself slowed; it can reflect early filers having already staked out core claim territory, a shift toward protecting monitoring software as trade secrets rather than patents, or simply publication lag affecting the most recent years. Figures for 2025 and 2026 are still incomplete because publication typically trails filing by around 18 months, so they should not be read as confirming a continued decline.
What does US9829055B2 actually cover, and what does it block?
US9829055B2, assigned to Safran Electronics & Defense, claims an electromechanical actuator combining an electric motor, a mechanical roller torque limiter, and a unidirectional transmission member secured to a brake device. The brake releases the transmission member when its electrical activator is powered and locks it, opposing rotation up to a maximum torque, when unpowered. Anyone designing a no-back mechanism that pairs an electrically-activated brake with a roller-based torque limiter in this specific release/lock arrangement should review this claim closely before finalising an architecture.
Disclaimer. This analysis is based on Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent records and is provided for general information and reference only. Patent data carries inherent limitations — recent filings are under-counted because of publication lag, counts may be on a record or family basis, classification and applicant-name data may contain errors or duplicates, and the underlying search query defines the scope shown — so the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing here is an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Verify independently and review with qualified patent and legal professionals before acting on it.
Method: Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Electromechanical Flight Control Actuators covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish. Every share divides by all records in scope. Data: Patsnap Eureka. See the full landscape report.