Primary Flight Display Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- 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.
- Filing has cooled from its 2018 peak. Annual filings fell from 38 in 2021 to 17 in 2024, a 55% drop over that span, though 2025-2026 figures are still filling in as publications lag filing.
- Navigation and traffic-control classes dominate. G01C (56.6% of records) and G08G (35.4%) carry more weight than aircraft-equipment class B64D (27.9%), showing symbology and traffic logic are contested harder than hardware.
Filing growth compares 2021 (38 records) with 2024 (17) — 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 995 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the primary flight display patent record shows
Primary flight display design sits at the intersection of avionics hardware and the software that renders attitude, airspeed and flight-path symbology to a pilot. The 995 records in this dataset span filings from 2015 through the 2026 cut-off, capturing everything from attitude director indicator geometry to display declutter logic and reversion behaviour when a sensor or display channel fails. Patent families are the fairer unit for comparing filers here, since a single design can generate several continuations and multiple national filings without representing new invention.
Filing activity peaked in 2018 at 59 records and has since declined, with the most recent complete year, 2024, sitting well below the 2021 level. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the final one to two years of the trend line will fill in further and should not yet be read as a slowdown.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 995-record dataset: the pace of filing over time, and where those filings sit across IPC subclasses. Both are drawn from the records in scope, with no recomputation beyond what the underlying figures already state.
A decade of filing, peak in 2018
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.
Navigation and traffic control lead the class mix
G01C (distance, navigation and gyroscopes) appears on 56.6% of the 995 records and G08G (traffic control systems) on 35.4%, ahead of B64D aircraft equipment at 27.9%. Because records can carry multiple IPC classes, these shares sum past 100% and should be read against the 995-record total, not against each other.
Shares are the percentage of the 995 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Primary Flight Display Design with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about primary flight display design and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited records in this dataset
Method of displaying an attitude director indicator in a head viewing system for aircraft
This Thales filing covers a head-worn viewing system that computes and graphically generates attitude director indicator symbology from posture detection and aircraft attitude sensors, projecting the resulting display to the wearer rather than a fixed instrument panel.Filed 2017-06-15 — illustrates the shift of ADI symbology from panel-mounted displays toward head-worn and wearable presentation.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20030093187A1 | PFN/TRAC systemTM FAA upgrades for accountable remote and robotics control to stop the unauthorized use of ai… | 977 |
| 2 | US20050187677A1 | PFN/TRAC systemTM FAA upgrades for accountable remote and robotics control to stop the unauthorized use of ai… | 595 |
| 3 | US6965816B2 | PFN/TRAC system FAA upgrades for accountable remote and robotics control to stop the unauthorized use of airc… | 489 |
| 4 | US20030132860A1 | Interface for visual cueing and control for tactical flightpath management | 341 |
| 5 | US6828922B1 | Synthetic airborne hazard display | 197 |
| 6 | US20030193411A1 | Electronic flight instrument displays | 177 |
| 7 | US7010398B2 | Control system providing perspective flight guidance | 158 |
| 8 | GB2491984A | Crew allertness monitoring of biowaves | 152 |
| 9 | US20040160341A1 | Display methodology for encoding simultaneous absolute and relative altitude terrain data | 151 |
| 10 | US6748325B1 | Navigation system | 147 |
Citation counts reward older filings that have had more time to accumulate citers inside the searched corpus — treat them as a measure of influence on later filings, not of current commercial relevance.
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 patterns in the dataset matter more than any single ranking: how concentrated ownership is, how the technology splits across classes, and how filing pace has actually moved.
Five companies hold most of the claim space
The leader alone accounts for 521 records, with the fifth-ranked assignee at 20 and the tenth at 13 — a steep drop-off from leader to the rest of the ranked field. A new entrant is filing into space that a handful of incumbents have already claimed heavily, particularly around core symbology and reversion logic.
Navigation and traffic logic outweigh hardware
G01C and G08G together cover more of the dataset than the aircraft-equipment class B64D, indicating that the harder-fought claim territory is in how flight-path and traffic data get computed and displayed, not in the physical display hardware itself.
Filing pace has eased since the early 2020s
Annual filings dropped from 38 in 2021 to 17 in 2024. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete and should not be read as confirming a continued decline.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to primary flight display design, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
The ranked field covers 90 companies, but activity is heavily skewed toward a handful of aerospace and avionics incumbents. Recent-year momentum data shows several of the historically largest filers with no publications in the latest year — consistent with the overall pace decline, not necessarily with reduced R&D investment given the publication lag.
One filer dominates the ranked field
The top-ranked assignee holds 521 of the 995 records in scope, more than the combined total of the next four ranked companies. This scale reflects decades of avionics program filings across multiple aircraft platforms rather than a single product line.
A sharp drop-off below the top few
Fifth place sits at 20 records and tenth place at 13 — a fraction of the leader's count. Below the top ten, the ranking runs into a long tail of companies with single-digit filings, typical of a field where a few large avionics suppliers set the pace.
Latest-year activity has gone quiet across the board
Recent-year momentum figures show the largest historical filers, including the field leader, recording zero publications in the latest year, with some showing a -100% year-over-year change. Given the 18-month publication lag, this reflects incomplete data as much as any actual pullback.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Honeywell International Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| The Boeing Company | 0 | — |
| Rockwell Collins, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Thales SA | 0 | — |
| INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS & SUPPORT INC | 0 | — |
| RED SIX AEROSPACE INC | 0 | -100% |
| AVIATION COMMUNICATION & SURVEILLANCE SYSTEMS LLC | 0 | — |
| Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation | 0 | — |
Where to take this next
The dataset points to a mature core (attitude, airspeed, flight-path symbology) surrounded by less-claimed adjacent branches. The next steps depend on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate or identifying open filing space.
Map claims against the leader's portfolio
With one assignee holding 521 of 995 records, any new filing in core ADI or flight-path symbology should be checked against that portfolio specifically, not just the field average.
Explore assignee portfolios in EurekaTrack the under-claimed branches
Head-worn display projection and display reversion failover show thinner filing density than core symbology — early movers here face less prior art congestion.
Run a white-space search in EurekaWatch for the 2025-2026 catch-up
Because publication lags filing by about 18 months, the apparent pace decline through 2024 will partly reverse as later filings publish. Re-check the trend in six to twelve months.
Set a filing alert in EurekaCommon questions about primary flight display patents
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.
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.
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%.
US20170168560A1, filed by Thales and published in 2017, covers a method of displaying an attitude director indicator through a head-worn viewing system, using posture detection and attitude sensors to compute and render the ADI symbology to the wearer. It is significant because it moves ADI presentation away from a fixed panel-mounted primary flight display toward a wearable, head-tracked format. Anyone developing head-worn or augmented-reality cockpit displays should review this filing's claim scope before finalising a design.
Based on filing density relative to the core symbology and navigation classes, branches such as head-worn ADI projection, display reversion failover logic and luminance adaptation for glare conditions show comparatively thinner coverage. These are adjacent to the heavily-claimed core rather than unrelated to it, so a workable first claim typically narrows to a specific failover trigger, sensor-fusion method, or adaptive display parameter rather than the broad display concept itself. Confirming this requires a targeted search against the current top assignees' claim sets, not just the aggregate class shares shown here.
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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.