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Run your analysis now →https://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/rd-blog/uncrewed-aerial-systems-patent-landscape-patent-landscape/ · Patsnap · data cut-off 2026-08-31 · downloaded from the live page
Patent Landscape · Uncrewed Aerial SystemsUncrewed Aerial Systems Patents: Who Leads and Where the Claim Space Is Still Open
- One filer dominates. the leader holds 1,237 records against a fifth-place total of 144, and the top 5 combined account for 22.4% of all 10,257 records in scope.
- Filing has cooled from its 2019 peak. annual filings ran from 1,140 in 2019 down to 570 in 2024, a 36% drop across 2021–2024 on complete-year data.
- Control and drone-specific classes crowd the field. B64C aeroplane/helicopter art touches 45.6% of records and B64U drone-specific art touches 39.2%, while sensing classes like G01S sit under 10%.
10.3K
Published Records
22%
Top-5 Share of All Records
-36%
Filing Growth 2021→2024
US
Leading Jurisdiction
Filing growth compares 2021 (890 records) with 2024 (570) — 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 10,257 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
Published byPatsnap Research··6 min readSourced from Patsnap Eureka
Overview
What this landscape covers
This dataset tracks 10,257 published records matching flight-controller, navigation-sensor, autonomous-mission and trajectory-control language against uncrewed and autonomous aerial vehicle terms, filed between 2015 and the 2026 data cut-off. It spans records filed at the United States, European, Chinese, WIPO/PCT, Indian and German offices, giving a cross-jurisdictional view of where UAS claim activity concentrates rather than a single-country snapshot.
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the most recent one to two years in any trend chart will always look thinner than they eventually turn out to be. Treat 2024 as the last complete filing year and read 2025–2026 as a floor, not a ceiling.
Filing activity and technology composition, 2015–2026
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee ranking and totals. Derived from a Patsnap search on Uncrewed Aerial Systems Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
The Numbers
Filing trend and technology composition
Filing volume, receiving-office split and IPC composition together show where UAS patent activity sits today and how it got there.
Filing trend: a 2019 peak, then a step down
Annual filings rose to a peak of 1,140 in 2019, then eased to 570 by 2024 — a 36% decline across the 2021–2024 span on complete-year data. 2025 and 2026 figures will rise as later publications land; they are not evidence of a continued slide.
Where the claims sit: airframe and control dominate
B64C (aeroplanes & helicopters) and B64U (drones specifically) between them touch the large majority of records, with G05D control-systems art close behind. Sensing-heavy classes such as G01S (radar/sonar/positioning) and communications classes H04N and H04W sit in single-digit-to-low-teens territory, well behind the airframe and control core.
Shares are the percentage of the 10,257 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Uncrewed Aerial Systems Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.
Go deeper on Uncrewed Aerial Systems Patent Landscape with Eureka
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Most-cited records and a representative filing
Representative filing
US20200369384A1 — Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle and Method of Control Thereof
AV8OR IP LTD
An autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle comprising an airframe body, at least one flight system mounted to it, an onboard flight controller adapted to control that flight system, a memory storage unit holding machine-readable flight control instructions, an onboard feedback system providing real-time internal flight characteristic data to the controller, and an external feedback system providing real-time external flight data to the same controller.Filed by AV8OR IP LTD, published 2020-11-26.
Highest-cited records in this dataset
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6056237A | Sonotube compatible unmanned aerial vehicle and system | 795 |
| 2 | US20170069214A1 | Unmanned aerial vehicles | 689 |
| 3 | US20050004723A1 | Vehicle control system including related methods and components | 640 |
| 4 | US9056676B1 | Systems and methods for UAV docking | 637 |
| 5 | US9412278B1 | Authentication systems and methods for generating flight regulations | 603 |
| 6 | US20100273504A1 | Network Autonomous Wireless Location System | 468 |
| 7 | US20160314224A1 | Autonomous vehicle simulation system | 412 |
| 8 | US8897770B1 | Apparatus for distributed airborne wireless communications | 400 |
| 9 | US20160114887A1 | Amphibious vertical takeoff and landing unmanned system and flying car with multiple aerial and aquatic fligh… | 399 |
| 10 | US20090152391A1 | Multibody aircrane | 399 |
Citation counts reward age inside a searched corpus — older filings accumulate references simply by being available longer, so treat these as markers of influence on subsequent filers rather than proof of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Citation counts and representative records. Derived from a Patsnap search on Uncrewed Aerial Systems Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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What the data means for filing strategy
Three patterns stand out once volume, concentration and technology composition are read together.
Concentration
22.4% of 10,257
top 5 share of all records
One filer, then a steep drop-off
The leader alone holds 1,237 records; by fifth place the count has fallen to 144. That gap means the field is not evenly contested at the top — it is dominated by one filer with a long tail of much smaller programmes behind it.
Top 10 combined reach 27.8% of all records.
Filing momentum
-36%, 2021→2024
complete-year filing change
Volume has stepped down from its 2019 peak
Filings peaked at 1,140 in 2019 and had fallen to 570 by 2024, the last year with complete publication data. That is a real pull-back in new filings rather than an artefact of publication lag, since both years are past the 18-month window.
2025–2026 counts will still rise as pending publications land.
Technology mix
45.6% B64C / 39.2% B64U
share of all 10,257 records
Airframe and drone-specific classes crowd the field
B64C and B64U between them touch the majority of records, with G05D control-systems art not far behind at 34.9%. Sensing and comms classes — G01S, H04N, H04W — sit far lower, each under 10% of records.
Multiple IPC tags per record mean these shares overlap, not sum to 100%.
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Looking for what nobody has claimed yet?
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to uncrewed aerial systems patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Co-assignee relationships and derived observations. Derived from a Patsnap search on Uncrewed Aerial Systems Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Players
Who is filing, and where activity has slowed
Recent-year momentum diverges sharply from historical volume: several of the largest historical filers show little or no activity in the latest tracked year, while at least one smaller filer is still growing.
Scale leader
1,237 records
total in ranking
The largest filer by a wide margin
The top-ranked assignee's total is nearly nine times the tenth-place count of 85, reflecting a sustained multi-year filing programme across airframe, control and drone-specific classes rather than a single burst of activity.
Fifth place sits at 144 records.
Recent momentum
-82% YoY
Skydio, latest year
Even active filers are pulling back in the latest year
Skydio's latest-year count fell 82% year-on-year, and several long-established filers show zero filings in the most recent tracked year. Given the 18-month publication lag, some of this is pipeline timing rather than a stopped programme.
Read the latest one to two years as provisional.
Concentration check
27.8% of 10,257
top 10 share of all records
A long tail beyond the ranked leaders
The 100 companies in the ranking cover well under a third of all records between them at the top 10 level, which means most of the corpus sits with assignees outside the ranked group — a genuinely fragmented base beneath the concentrated top.
The ranking is the full list the data endpoint returns, not a top-50 cut.
Recent-year filing momentum by assignee
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| SKYDIO INC | 5 | -82% |
| AeroVironment Inc | 2 | +100% |
| SZ DJI Technology Co., Ltd. | 1 | -89% |
| Aurora Flight Sciences Corp | 0 | — |
| The Boeing Co | 0 | — |
| Guangzhou XAG Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Beta Air LLC | 0 | -100% |
| GoPro Inc | 0 | — |
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee-level momentum. Derived from a Patsnap search on Uncrewed Aerial Systems Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
What's Next
Where to take this next
The numbers above answer who and how much. The next questions are what specific claims say and where a new filing could actually land.
Map claim scope against the leader's portfolio
With one assignee holding 1,237 records, a freedom-to-operate check should start by mapping its specific claim language in flight-controller and trajectory-control classes before assuming open space.
Explore assignee claims in EurekaWatch the under-claimed branches
Object manipulation, docking/recovery and multi-UAV mesh coordination sit well below the airframe and control core in filing density — a candidate list for where a first claim has more room.
Run a white space search in EurekaSource: Patsnap Eureka. Forward-looking reading of the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Uncrewed Aerial Systems Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
FAQ
Common questions on UAS patent activity
One assignee leads the ranking with 1,237 records, well ahead of the fifth-place filer at 144 and the tenth-place filer at 85. The top 5 filers combined account for 22.4% of all 10,257 records in scope, and the top 10 combined reach 27.8%. That leaves the large majority of records spread across a long tail of smaller filers outside the ranked group.
Filing volume peaked in 2019 at 1,140 records and had fallen to 570 by 2024, a 36% decline over that complete-year span. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete and will rise as pending applications publish, so they should not be read as evidence the decline is continuing. The clearest read is a step-down from 2019 levels rather than a collapse.
B64C, covering aeroplanes and helicopters generally, touches 45.6% of all 10,257 records, and B64U, the drone-specific class, touches 39.2%. G05D, covering control of non-electric variables, is close behind at 34.9%. Sensing and communications classes such as G01S, H04N and H04W each sit under 10%, indicating claim density concentrates on airframe and control rather than perception or connectivity.
The technology composition data shows sensing, comms and manipulation classes filed far less densely than airframe and control classes — G01S, H04N and H04W each account for under 10% of the 10,257 records, against 45.6% for B64C alone. Branches like onboard object manipulation, autonomous docking and recovery, and multi-UAV mesh coordination look under-claimed relative to the core, though a full freedom-to-operate check requires examining specific claim language, not just class density.
US20200369384A1, filed by AV8OR IP LTD and published 2020-11-26, illustrates a common structure: an airframe body, a flight system, an onboard flight controller, stored flight-control instructions, and both an onboard and an external feedback system feeding real-time flight data back to the controller. That layered feedback-to-controller architecture recurs across many filings in this dataset and is a useful reference point for scoping novelty in new flight-control claims.
Answers are grounded in the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Uncrewed Aerial Systems Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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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.