Hovering over the Drone Patent Landscape

As it occurs with many disruptive technologies, drones (technically known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles {UAVs}) owe their development to the defense industry.  In the last couple of years we have witnessed the widespread adoption of this technology for civilian use.  Governments are adjusting airspace regulations to accommodate drones and pioneering companies are releasing commercial UAV products.

Expectations are high for the emerging UAV industry. According to a study commissioned by the UK Government [1], the civilian UAV market could be $400 billion by the end of the decade. Google and Facebook have both acquired their own UAV manufacturers, Titan Aerospace and Ascenta respectively.

How fast is this technology growing?

Let’s take a panoramic flight over the current technological landscape related to drones.

To do so, first we carry out a search for UAV related patents in the IFI Claims comprehensive global patent database. Built on the Fairview Research Alexandria platform, the database combines information from multiple national and international sources into a single normalized database.  The database is accessed through the CLAIMS Direct patent web service API.
 
We obtain a total of 7,670 published documents (including 4,357 patent applications, 1,736 utility models and 1,309 granted patents). Figure 1 shows the evolution in the number of published patents.
 
Figure 2 shows the distribution of patent documents by application country.  China is the source of the most drone related patent applications.   Since 1994, a total of 4,803 patent documents have been published by the Chinese Patent Office (2,456 applications, 1,718 utility models). 629 have been granted so far (a significant number of them (278) during the last 2 years).

Applications in the US nearly reached a thousand, whereas European and PCT Worldwide applications surpassed five hundred in both cases.

As for the rest of the countries, South Korea, Russia, Japan, Spain, Canada, France and the UK, France, Australia, Germany and Taiwan all active in this technology. 

Regulations and legislation related to drones are either non-existent or very limited.  Rules vary country to country.  The ultimate size of the commercial drone market, and the success of drone manufacturers, will be determined by the nature of the final regulations.  In the US, for example, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has so far only given six film and television companies permission to use unmanned aircraft for film-making purposes [2].
 

Who are the main players and what technologies are they developing?

Leading aerospace and defense contractors have pioneered the development of Unmaned Aerial Systems and still occupy the top positions in the list of patent holders. Aerospace and defense group Thales has more than a hundred patents documents filed on flight management and communication systems for UAVs.  Honeywell follows with similar number of filed patents on different kinds of special use aircraft (international patent class: B64C 39/02). Aerovironment a pioneer in human-powered flight is filing patents on aircraft using automatic pilots (B64C 13/18), adjustable wings (B64C 3/38) and other related equipment (B64D 47/00). Boeing and EADS are also important players in this field and are active in several technology areas. EADS’s developments on radars for mapping (G01S 13/89) are noteable; Boeing has patented technology on navigational instruments (G01C 21/00) and measurement arrangements (G01D 1/06). Raytheon [3] with 67 patents and Lockheed Martin [4] (52) have been developing technologies related to ground or aircraft-carrier-deck installations and technologies for arresting, launching or towing gear (B64F). These two companies have jointly teamed for several years within the US Unmanned Aerial Vehicle program along with General Atomics, a company which commercializes the Predator drone, well known for its deployment by the US army in the battlefield. Another top player in this domain is BAE Systems which is active in aircrafts and rotocrafts (B64C 27/10) and programme-control systems using digital processors (G05B 19/042). Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms company and one of the world’s leading exporters of UAVs is also in the top applicants list. Its leading product is the Hermes 450 drone. In 2005 Elbit had also partnered with Thales UK in the joint Venture UAV Tactical Systems Ltd (U-TacS), for the development of the Watchkeeper WK 450 UAV.  Elbit owns patents on unmanned air vehicles and methods of landing them (US20060006281A1, AU2009200804A1, EP1784331A1, IL177185D0, CA2659678A1, SG154440A1), and also on apparatus control for obtaining images (ES2376298T3), for extending the operational electronic range of a vehicle (CA2662299A1), and for flight control during stall susceptibility conditions (WO2012101645A4). Northrop Grumman has less patent activity and is focused mainly on target-seeking control (G05D 1/12). 

A new class of civilian focused UAV manufacturers have emerged in recent years.  Parrot of France is an example.   Parrot is today a very active applicant with about 50 patents on remote control arrangements using wireless transmission (A63H 30/04), radio links (G08C 17/02), helicopters, gyroplanes (A63H 27/133) and toys aircrafts (A63H 27/00), equipped for control of attitude (G05D 1/08).
 
IBM is also present in the UAV technology space. IBM develops technologies for navigation instruments (G01C 21/00), and methods for control of position, course, altitude, or attitude of land, water, air, or space vehicles (G05D 1/00). Other relevant applicants are American companies such as Florida Turbine Corp, Rockwell Collins, ITT Manufacturing, Excelis ; France’s SAFRAN group (represented for SNECMA and SEGEM Defense as patent assignees) and the French Naval Defence and Energy Group DCNS. Japan’s Murata specialises in programme-control systems based in sequence controllers or logic controllers (G05B 19/04) and in control of position or course in two dimensions (G05D 1/02).

The patenting activity carried out by research institutions is overwhelmingly dominated by Chinese institutions; Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics is the absolute top institution in terms of registered patents. Alone it has filed 267 patents. Leading institutions outside China include Israel’s Technion University and the Massachussetts Institute of Technology.

Collaborations in Drone development

The patent data we have gathered allows us to identify collaboration amongst several organizations. We identify, for example, Chinese institutions such as National Electric Network Company which is co-assignee along with several other Chinese companies and research institutions (see figure 5 below) of inventions related to unmanned devices for power inspection, amongst others.

In the field of Energy, multinational company Honeywell collaborates with US based aerospace engineering and software development firm Avid Llc. (), which carries out multidisciplinary aircraft design and analyses. Both companies own granted patents in the USA (US8240597B2) for ducted fan air-vehicles. Similarly, Shell co-patents with UK based developer of autonomous underwater vehicle Go Science Limited, on an annular airborne vehicle provided with a propulsion system (granted patent US8408489B2).
Israeli institutions Technion Res & Dev Foundation and University Carmel Haifa partner together for the protection in Europe of developments related to UAV decision and control systems (EP1974305A4). 

Japan’s Toyota Motor has an international application filed with Canada’s Uti limited Partnership on vehicular navigation and position systems (WO2007143806A2). Sarnoff Corporation co-patents with SRI International in the USA on methods and apparatus for capture and distribution of broadband data associated with intelligence information garnered from an aerial vehicle (US20090012995A1). There is also co-patenting between ITT Manufacturing and its spinoff Exelis. In Europe, EADS group partners with Eurocopter (now Airbus Helicopters) on an aircraft propulsion architecture integrating an energy recovery system (US20140290208A1).
 

Landscape overview of patented technologies related with drones

The map in Figure 6, generated with Treparel’s big data and text analytics software KMX, offers a panoramic view of the topic areas covered by all UAV related patents.
 
Each dot in the map represents a patent document. Patents closely grouped are patents disclosing similar content whereas patents separated from others or isolated are patents disclosing unrelated topics. Some differentiated topic areas or subject groups can therefore be distinguished from the overall patent dataset representation. We note, for example, two main dense groups side by side: A first one in the lower left area of the map where we have inventions  dealing with mechanical issues, transportation, wheels, rods, etc. and another main group  (in the upper right area of the map) with patents related to means for gathering and managing data, signal controlling, etc. The map also indicates through colored dots who is working in each area (main players), as referenced in the legend.
 

We now take a closer look at patents filed during the last 2 years (2013 and 2014) for a better perception of current developments. For this purpose, we have used KMX’s classification and highlighting capability to classify patents in application areas of “surveillance”, “agriculture”, “satellite”, “transport”, “solar”, “military” and “combat”).

Clearly emerging technology areas are:

 

Emerging Companies

Chinese institutions are taking the lead in terms of recent patent activity on UAVs. National Electric Network Company has registered more than 70 applications only in the last two years; another strong newcomer is Chongqing Kim Tae Aviation which operates in the field of unmanned aircraft for agriculture and has filed 61 applications only in 2014.

Top Chinese inventor Zhuo Xiang-Dong alone owns more than 60 patents applications; XI AN FEISIDA AUTOMATION ENG has 33 applications just in 2014;  NANJING JIUSHUN MAGNETIC LEVITATION TECHNOLOGY CO LTD has filed 25 applications in 2014 on ground or aircraft-carrier-deck installations using catapults (B64F 1/06); Jiangsu ai rui taike unmanned aircraft science and technology co ltd, has 41 applications in 2014 and Suzhou ai rui taike unmanned aircraft science and technology co ltd has16 in 2014; Hubei Yi Watts Science has 16 applications and utility models on unmanned engines in  2014. Finally, DJI with its flagship products Phantom and Inspire One has a record of 20 patents published during the last two years under assignee names Shenzhen Dji Innovations (in China) and Sz Dji Technology Co Ltd in the US, Korea, Japan and Mexico.  Note that the applicant names shows above are based on statistical machine translation.

Emerging Drone Startups

To complete our overview of drone related innovations, we draw on CrunchBase  and Angelist, the world’s two most comprehensive datasets of startup activity. We check for startups that explicitly develop products or technologies related to UAVs. Figure 9 shows the main associated categories.
 

Startups operate in the major segments of hardware, software and manufacturing.  They also provide differentiated services including security, transportation, ecommerce, health and biotech, photo/video and analytics.

In the table below we list the top UAV startups sorted by amount of funds raised.
Amongst these startups, only Prioria and Precision Hawks have patented technologies: PrecisionHawk has patented an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle in the US and Canada under the applicant name of Winehawk Inc and Precisionhawk inc (CA151099S, USD706678S1); Prioria has filed an international PCT application for a system and method for onboard vision processing (WO2007047953A2). 

 

Some final remarks