Patents for technological trajectories understanding: The avionics case study

Avionics industry is facing changes since the 90´s. The purpose of our work is to highlight these changes, and more specifically from a technological point of view. The analysis aims to demonstrate that firms in avionics are really closed in their development, following the same technological paths. Our approach relies on patent datas from the 80´s up to 2008 for eight major avionics suppliers.