Flight Control Redundancy Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
Flight control redundancy and voting patents: mapping the architectures behind fault-tolerant flight computers
67.7% concentration. The top five ranked assignees account for 21 of the 31 records in scope — filing has consolidated hard around a small group of aerospace and industrial control specialists. Filings peaked at 10 in 2017 and tapered toward zero by the most recent year. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the last one to two years understate real filing activity and should not be read as a decline yet.
- 1SIEMENS AG6
- 2HAMILTON SUNDSTRAND CORP5
- 3SIEMENS ENERGY GLOBAL GMBH & CO KG5
- 4HONEYWELL INTERNATIONAL INC3
- 5BOMBARDIER INC2
See the full flight control redundancy and voting 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 on this landscape
What counts as triplex redundancy in flight control patents?
Triplex redundancy refers to an architecture with three parallel processing or actuation channels, where a majority-voting scheme resolves disagreement and isolates a faulted channel. In this dataset it appears alongside dissimilar redundancy, where the three channels additionally use different hardware or software to reduce the chance of a common-mode failure taking out all channels at once. The representative record in this landscape, US7877627B1, is a direct example: three primary and three redundant processor modules with 2-out-of-3 output voting.
Who are the leading patent holders in flight control redundancy and voting?
The ranking returned by this dataset covers 15 companies across 31 records, led by a single assignee with 6 records — nearly triple the count held at fifth place, which sits at 2. The top five combined account for 21 records, or 67.7% of all records in scope, and the top ten account for 27, or 87.1%. That is a steep concentration curve: a small group of aerospace and industrial-control filers holds most of the documented claim space, with the remaining ranked assignees each holding a single record.
Why did filings in this space peak in 2017 and then decline?
The trend data shows 10 filings in 2017 against zero in the most recent complete year, but that decline should be read cautiously. Patent publication typically lags the actual filing date by around 18 months, so the last one to two years in any dataset are always undercounted relative to what has actually been filed. A genuine slowdown cannot be confirmed until enough time has passed for those recent filings to publish.
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 Flight Control Redundancy and Voting 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.