Landing Gear Retraction Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
Landing gear retraction and actuation patents: who holds the ground, and where it is still open
83.9% concentration. the top 5 of 52 ranked assignees account for 375 of 447 records in scope — a field with almost no room at the top and a long tail below it. Filings rose to a peak of 46 in 2022 and had fallen to 10 by 2024, a 78% drop from the 2021 level of 45. Treat 2025 and 2026 as incomplete rather than as a continued decline: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so recent-year counts will still rise as more applications publish.
- 1MESSIER DOWTY136
- 2GOODRICH CORP123
- 3AIRBUS OPERATIONS LTD66
- 4SAFRAN LANDING SYST CANADA INC32
- 5THE BOEING CO18
See the full landing gear retraction and actuation 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
Who holds the most landing gear retraction and actuation patents?
In this dataset of 447 records, the ranking is led by a single assignee with 136 records, well ahead of the fifth-ranked company at 18. The top five assignees together hold 375 records, which is 83.9% of all 447 records in scope, and the top ten reach 96.0%. That means the field is dominated by a small group of landing-gear-systems and airframe primes rather than spread across many independent filers.
Is landing gear retraction technology still being actively patented?
Filing peaked at 46 records in 2022 and had fallen to 10 by 2024, a 78% decline from the 2021 level of 45. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the 2025-26 figures in the data are still incomplete and should not be read as proof the field has gone quiet, but the 2021-2024 trend itself is a real and complete decline. Whether filing has genuinely slowed or is simply between waves will only be clear once the more recent years finish publishing.
What patent classes cover landing gear uplock and downlock mechanisms?
The overwhelming majority of records, 92.8% of the 447 in scope, carry the B64C aeroplane and helicopter structures classification, reflecting that these mechanisms are claimed as part of the aircraft structure. Secondary classes include F16F springs and dampers at 8.7%, and B64D aircraft equipment and F15B fluid-pressure actuators each around 4.9%. Because a single record can carry multiple classes, these shares add up to more than 100% and should not be summed.
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 Landing Gear Retraction and Actuation 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.