Although data privacy concerns revolving Chinese companies may not be widespread in the market, they are certainly affecting business operations in the United States to some extent. Cape, a leading cloud platform for remote drone operations, announced last week that it dropped its support for DJI drones and partnered with Skydio instead. Cape and Skydio are both based in Redwood City, California, and the press release cited the Department of Homeland Security‘s recent warnings regarding security risks related to the use of Chinese-made drones.

Although DJI certainly has the most robust patent portfolio in the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles sector, both Cape and Skydio have growing portfolios of their own. Cape has a pending application directed to network-based operations of UAVs, while Skydio has a pending application directed to tracking objects using UAVs. It will be important for them to continue investing in IP in order to compete against giants like DJI while denying themselves access to their technology.