Primary Flight Display Patents: Concentration at the Top, a Long Tail Below
78.2% concentration. The top five assignees hold 778 of 995 records in scope — filing here means clearing claim space that one company already occupies heavily. Filings ran at 51 in 2017, rose to a peak of 59 in 2018, then eased through the early 2020s to 38 in 2021 and 17 in 2024 — a 55% decline over that three-year window. The 2025 and 2026 counts are still incomplete due to publication lag and should not be read as the trend's endpoint.
- 1HONEYWELL INTERNATIONAL INC521
- 2THE BOEING CO122
- 3ROCKWELL COLLINS INC90
- 4THALES SA25
- 5INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS & SUPPORT INC20
See the full primary flight display design 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 primary flight display patents
Who holds the most patents on primary flight display technology?
One assignee holds 521 of the 995 records in this dataset, making it by far the largest filer in the field. The next four largest filers combined bring the top-five share to 778 records, or 78.2% of all records in scope. Below the top ten, the ranked field of 90 companies thins quickly into single-digit filers, so most of the enforceable claim density sits with a small number of established avionics suppliers.
Is primary flight display patent filing increasing or decreasing?
Filing peaked in 2018 at 59 records and has since eased, falling from 38 in 2021 to 17 in 2024, a 55% drop over that span. However, patent publication typically lags the actual filing date by roughly 18 months, so the 2025 and 2026 figures in any dataset are understated and will rise as more filings publish. Treat the 2024 figure, not the raw 2025-2026 numbers, as the most recent reliable read.
What technology areas dominate primary flight display patents?
Navigation and gyroscope-related classification (IPC G01C) appears on 56.6% of the 995 records, and traffic control systems (G08G) on 35.4%, both ahead of aircraft equipment hardware (B64D) at 27.9%. This indicates that the more heavily contested claim space is in flight-path computation, symbology logic and traffic-aware display behaviour rather than in the physical display unit itself. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC classes, these percentages are measured against the full 995-record total and are expected to sum past 100%.
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 Primary Flight Display Design 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.