Patent landscape

Drone Platforms and Parts Supplier Landscape

A view of who is investing in drone platform and component IP, and who files globally. For sales and BD teams selling into UAV programs, logistics drones, and defense platforms: use the ranking to see where platform makers, aerospace primes, and sensor and comms suppliers are concentrating R&D, and where that activity crosses borders.

Companies tracked

Distinct assignees with at least one international patent family in this segment.

Top company

DJI

484 international families, filing across 12 offices.

Top 5 share of top 25

45%

Share of international families among the top 25 held by the top 5 filers.

Top 25 by international patent families

International family counts first, since those are what travel across markets. “Since 2018” and “Since 2023” are all families (international plus single-office) first filed on or after that year.

#	Company	HQ	Intl families	Since 2018	Since 2023	Filing offices	Intl share
1	DJI	China	484	519	16	12	93%
2	Autel Robotics	China	184	249	45	5	74%
3	Sony	Japan	134	158	26	15	85%
4	Wing Aviation	United States	114	131	46	12	87%
5	Kubota	Japan	114	124	33	8	92%
6	Toyota Motor	Japan	89	114	38	8	78%
7	Nileworks	Japan	86	93	0	4	92%
8	Boeing	United States	85	180	30	14	47%
9	Hyundai Motor Group (incl. Kia)	South Korea	82	99	23	7	83%
10	Airbus	Germany	78	86	8	18	91%
11	Walmart	United States	76	87	1	7	87%
12	Rakuten Group	Japan	76	81	9	6	94%
13	Honda Motor	Japan	67	84	29	6	80%
14	Ishikawa Energy Research	Japan	62	67	11	5	93%
15	Ford Global Technologies	United States	61	67	7	7	91%
16	NEC	Japan	58	79	22	5	73%
17	Aeronext	Japan	58	72	10	10	81%
18	NTT Docomo	Japan	56	59	6	5	95%
19	Honeywell	United States	47	88	20	10	53%
20	Mitsubishi Heavy Industries	Japan	46	54	25	9	85%
21	Panasonic	Japan	45	52	4	6	87%
22	Nippon Telegraph and Telephone	Japan	44	52	13	3	85%
23	Rakuten	Japan	44	46	0	6	96%
24	Denso	Japan	43	58	26	6	74%
25	SoftBank	Japan	40	43	9	16	93%

Methodology

Patent families first filed in 2018 or later, matched on CPC or IPC codes. “International” means filed in two or more patent offices. Source is Google Patents Public Data via BigQuery.

Codes: CPC and IPC B64U (unmanned aerial vehicles) and B64C39/024.

Companies are merged across name variants (for example, several spelling and romanization variants of the same assignee are rolled up into one row). Universities and government research bodies are excluded, so the ranking reflects commercial filers.

Rankings reflect patent activity, not revenue. A heavy filer may be protecting a research program that has not shipped, and a low filer may still be a dominant supplier.

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