Tiltrotor Patents: Top Companies & Filing Trends 2026
Tiltrotor and Compound Rotorcraft Patents: Who Holds the Proprotor Claims
90.0% of all 1,807 records sit with just five assignees — this field is one of the most concentrated corners of aerospace patenting. Annual filings peaked at 352 in 2017. By 2021 the field was still active at 188 filings; by 2024 — the last year in the trend that can be treated as complete — that had dropped to 42, a 78% decline over that three-year span. Read this as consolidation around fewer, better-capitalised programmes rather than as the technology going quiet: the underlying engineering problems have not gone away, but who is willing to file on them has narrowed.
- 1TEXTRON INNOVATIONS INC779
- 2BELL HELICOPTER TEXTRON INC750
- 3UNMANNED AEROSPACE LLC38
- 4ARCHER AVIATION INC31
- 5RESPONSE TECHNOLOGIES LLC29
See the full tiltrotor and compound rotorcraft 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 tiltrotor patents
Who holds the most tiltrotor patents?
One assignee holds 779 of the 1,807 records in this dataset, far ahead of fifth place at 29 and tenth place at 12. That gap means a large share of the field’s core proprotor, nacelle-tilt and conversion-corridor claims trace back to a single corporate portfolio built up over decades of tiltrotor programme work. Anyone assessing freedom to operate in this space should start with that portfolio before looking at the long tail of smaller filers.
Is tiltrotor patent filing growing or shrinking?
Filings peaked in 2017 at 352 and declined to 42 by 2024, a 78% drop from the 2021 level of 188 filings over that three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year the data treats as complete, since publication typically lags filing by around 18 months. The decline reflects consolidation around fewer, better-resourced programmes rather than a collapse in engineering activity.
What is a proprotor and why does it matter for patents?
A proprotor is the rotor system on a tiltrotor aircraft that acts as a helicopter rotor in vertical flight and rotates into a forward-thrust propeller for airplane-mode flight. It is the mechanical core of tiltrotor patenting: hub design, blade flapping and pitch-change axes, and in-plane frequency tuning all appear repeatedly in the highest-value filings in this dataset, including the representative filing highlighted on this page. Most whirl-flutter and conversion-corridor claims are built around proprotor geometry.
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 Tiltrotor and Compound Rotorcraft 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.