Patenting of publicly known ideas and concepts. 2

Sikorsky's patent attorney and a few of Sikorsky's current and previous employees are the Correspondent and the Inventors of the filed US Patent Application 20090140095 for 'ELECTRIC POWERED ROTARY-WING AIRCRAFT', dated November 30, 2007 and January 23, 2008. All of the claims should be of common sense to practitioners of electrical and rotorcraft engineering. But, the very broad and sweeping claims in this patent application could severely inhibit the efforts of others that wish to research and develop electrically driven rotorcraft.

In addition, the previous Eng-Tips - Rotorcraft Engineering Forum thread 'Electrically driven rotor concept for future rotorcraft', dated 24 Jun 07 [Electrotor-Plus] incorporates claims that are made in the above patent application. However, this tread and its linked Web pages precede the above filing dates. These claims being; that the motor shares a common axis of rotation with the aerodynamic rotor and that the motor is an integral part of the rotorhub.

Another concept, the [Electrotor-Simplex] also incorporates the above claims and was also broadly disseminated on the Internet before the above patent application.

A further concept, the [Electrotor-SlowMo] which incorporates the patent application's claim of a slow-speed motor w/o gearbox was also broadly disseminated on the Internet before the above patent application.

These three electric rotorcraft drives and their 'inventions' were freely placed in the public domain so that all could utilize them and build upon them.


What could or should be done to assure that these obvious and previously known ideas remain available to all who wish to participate in the progress of electrically driven rotorcraft?

Dave Jackson