One assignee leads with 19 of the 128 records in this dataset, well ahead of the fifth-ranked holder at 10 and the tenth at 4. The top five assignees combined hold 52.3% of all records, and the top ten hold 73.4%, so the field has a genuine leader plus a fragmented long tail rather than a tight cluster of equally sized competitors. Anyone assessing this space should check the leader’s portfolio first, since it covers the largest single block of claim space.

Yes — filings rose from 9 in 2021 to a peak of 17 in 2024, an 89% increase over that three-year span. The years after 2024 show lower counts in the raw data, but that reflects the roughly 18-month lag between filing and publication rather than an actual slowdown; 2024 is the most recent year that can be treated as complete. Anyone tracking momentum should wait for later data cuts before concluding the field has cooled.

US11801936B2, assigned to Textron Innovations Inc. and published 2023-10-31, covers a flight control system that translates pilot pedal input into a tail rotor actuator command while applying yaw rate limits tied to a vortex ring state envelope. In practice this means the claim ties electronic actuation of the tail rotor to a specific control-input pathway (pedal input) and a specific limiting condition (avoiding loss of tail rotor effectiveness via VRS limits). Designs that use a different control input path, a different envelope basis, or purely mechanical (non-electronic) actuation sit further from this claim’s core.