STRUCK: An Aerospace Engineering & Lightning Protection Show

STRUCK: An Aerospace Engineering & Lightning Protection Show


EP28 – GoGo Challenges SmartSky Patents; What Did we Learn From the Airbus Vahana EVTOL? Plus Airbus ZeroE & Hydrogen Tech

September 28, 2020

In this episode we discuss the Airbus Vahana EVTOL, Gogo challenging SmartSky's patents, hydrogen tech, Airbus ZeroE, and more.

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Full Transcript: EP28 - GoGo Challenges SmarkSky Patents; What Did we Learn From the Airbus Vahana EVTOL? Plus Airbus ZeroE & Hydrogen Tech

Welcome back to the Struck podcast. On today's episode, we've got a wide range of topics. Number one, we're going to chat about smart sky prevailing in a. A patent dispute with Gogo. We're going to talk a little bit about Airbus and potential unsafe condition. They got a warning from both the, EASA and FAA this past week.

And we're going to chat a little bit more about Boeing, specifically this week, suspending work at their futuristic next innovation unit. So that unit covers drones, futuristic aircraft, potentially EVT, a Wells air taxi market, stuff like that. We're going to chat a bunch about hydrogen today in our engineering segment.

So some potential planes being converted to it, and as well as a Airbus concept of zero E. So we'll chat about those. And the lastly in our electric tech segment, we're going to talk about Airbus a little bit about Tesla battery day and some of the potential, electric changes upcoming in the future.

So Alan let's get started. Tell us about this patent dispute, between smart sky and Gogo. So obviously there's lots of, intellectual property that you know, is, pretty easy, to dispute. I've heard that up to 40% of patent, Patent claims are thrown out when they finally actually get disputed in court.

but what is this smart sky company? What does this mean to the industry here?

Allen Hall: [00:01:49] Smart sky and Gogo are in the air to ground ATG. They call it, data, transmission networks. essentially cell towers are located across the country. And as you. Fly above them. It works like a cell phone. Does where you hand off between different cell towers is how it works.

the, real interesting thing about all these systems is that you're moving at such high speeds and at altitude that the logic to switch between a tower to tower and where to be looking at, to know where the next one is. Is really key to that function of the system, much like the way your, mobile phone works.

and Gogo has been doing that forever and they've got thousands of installations on all kinds of business aircraft, and they've been the leader in that market for a long time. So smart sky. it has a patent out which sort of overlaps and they're going to smart sky is saying that they have some IP, they have a patent and Gogo feels like it infringes on things they're already doing.

And smart sky says Gogo is infringing on their intellectual property. And the patent office, basically stepped out of it. And so when you apply for a patent, the, all the patents are go through like a, pre-publication thing. So the there's a, process of which the patent office published the applicat...