FPA supports clients across the defence and aerospace sector with IP strategy grounded in real technical understanding. We work across complex hardware, software and systems-based technologies, helping clients protect commercially important innovations while navigating confidentiality, collaboration, procurement and international filing considerations. Our defence practice includes capability to operate under relevant security clearances when required for sensitive engagements.
How we help
Innovation in defence and aerospace often sits at the intersection of technical complexity, confidentiality, regulation and multi-party development. Effective IP strategy in this sector is not just about filing patents. It also requires careful decisions about what to disclose, what to retain as know-how, how to manage inventorship and ownership, and how to align protection with commercialisation, funding and supply-chain objectives.
We advise clients who are developing advanced aerospace and defence technologies and support them from early-stage invention capture through to patent drafting, prosecution and broader portfolio strategy, with advice tailored to the technical and commercial realities of the sector.
Our technical range of expertise includes:
- Autonomous and remotely operated systems
- Guidance, navigation and control systems
- Sensing, imaging and signal-processing technologies
- Secure communications and telecommunications
- Satellite, payload and space technologies
- Embedded software and artificial intelligence
- Electronics, power and control systems
- Advanced mechanical systems and materials
Our expertise in action
FPA works with start-ups, established technology companies, research organisations and universities developing defence and aerospace technologies. Our role is not limited to preparing patent applications. We help clients make sound decisions about how best to protect individual innovations, whether through patents, confidential know-how or a broader combination of IP rights and contractual controls. That includes developing filing strategies that reflect product timelines, disclosure risk, collaboration structures, commercial objectives, and jurisdictional complexity, particularly where technologies are deployed across borders, at sea or in space. In these contexts, questions of ownership, infringement, enforcement and applicable law are not always straightforward, and IP strategy needs to be planned accordingly so that protection supports real business outcomes rather than existing as a standalone legal exercise.
