Suborbital Spaceplanes

[cpast]

I only see three applications (those three) and zero grants from USPTO with him as inventor ("inventor" and "assignee" are different, and typically the company would be the assignee, as in fact it is in all three applications which list him as inventor). It might be a recent grant. Regardless, they've at least filed for patents, and while the USPTO claims only ~50% of applications are accepted, you're allowed to refile as often as you want and other people estimate most applications are ultimately granted, so it's likely that they'll receive at least one patent if they haven't already (and even while it's pending, the reason the application is published is to put others on notice that it might be patented in the future, which means other companies are less likely to work on things that would be infringing, which gives some of the edge you'd legally only get from the patent grant). The real question is going to be whether the things protected by those patents are enough to give Escape Dynamics a solid edge, or if other companies will be able to either invalidate one or more (which wouldn't be cheap), or find another way to do beamed power. I don't know enough about the topic to know how much of an edge the patents will/do give, but clearly they think it gives them an advantage over competitors.