I work in the aviation industry. This was a good read. The article hinted at the oligopolies that exist in aviation and in practice the industry is incredibly conservative and slow to change (particularly commercial aviation). While new technology is developed all the time, the extreme regulatory oversight combined with so much of the industry relying on long-standing relationships makes it difficult for any new entrant to come into the market. There is also a lot of domain specific knowledge that seems difficult to easily transfer.
Is aviation encumbered with patents like software development is?
[−]colechristensen · 2026-07-02 Thu 00:40 UTC ·
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For aerospace it's more like asking if Google, Meta, and Apple are encumbered by patents, because they're all big players. The smaller players tend to do one hyper-specific thing for a big player.
Also for aerospace the patents are more legitimate. Software is encumbered by stupid patents <obvious idea> but on a computer! whereas aerospace patents are more legitimately about hardware that indeed took years and millions to develop and optimize.
> ...whereas aerospace patents are more legitimately about hardware that indeed took years and millions to develop and optimize.
Something that leaps out at me reading through semiconductor and aerospace patents is a noticeable fraction of them are basically saying, "hey, <non-obvious process understanding that pushes our limits of comprehension of physics required> to achieve some desired effect was found to be useful, but it consumed <years and millions to develop and optimize> because it was such a convoluted journey filled with zillions of dead ends, so we want a patent on that because the end result only looks obvious in hindsight". I don't see as much of this in software at this time, though I suspect it may change in the future.
[−]usernametaken29 · 2026-07-02 Thu 00:55 UTC ·
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Honestly this is a good thing. I can endure buggy software but I don’t want to deal with buggy planes. Regulatory pressure is a market force and a useful one too. There’s a huge difference between ship fast and ship right - the latter one requires deep pockets and willingness to commit to ongoing risk. People always say big Pharma and aviation and such are oligopolies, and that’s bad, but they rarely see the capital intensiveness of the whole process. Some things are slow and deliberate and restricted to big corporate only for good reasons
> I can endure buggy software but I don’t want to deal with buggy planes
A plane built for resilience against defective engine components would be very different from the airliners we fly today. I would assume more engines for redundancy, better protection against catastrophic failure, different designs to allow engines to function even if parts flew out, and so on. It’s an interesting design exercise to build from radically different expectations from the fundamental parts.
Alternatively, a far less radical redesign would be turbines running at a much more forgiving regime feeding electric motors.
Also for aerospace the patents are more legitimate. Software is encumbered by stupid patents <obvious idea> but on a computer! whereas aerospace patents are more legitimately about hardware that indeed took years and millions to develop and optimize.
Something that leaps out at me reading through semiconductor and aerospace patents is a noticeable fraction of them are basically saying, "hey, <non-obvious process understanding that pushes our limits of comprehension of physics required> to achieve some desired effect was found to be useful, but it consumed <years and millions to develop and optimize> because it was such a convoluted journey filled with zillions of dead ends, so we want a patent on that because the end result only looks obvious in hindsight". I don't see as much of this in software at this time, though I suspect it may change in the future.
A plane built for resilience against defective engine components would be very different from the airliners we fly today. I would assume more engines for redundancy, better protection against catastrophic failure, different designs to allow engines to function even if parts flew out, and so on. It’s an interesting design exercise to build from radically different expectations from the fundamental parts.
Alternatively, a far less radical redesign would be turbines running at a much more forgiving regime feeding electric motors.