ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 9 -- United States Patent no. 12,351,293, issued on July 8, was assigned to Wisk Aero LLC (Mountain View, Calif.).

"Propeller ground stop mechanism" was invented by Geoffrey Alan Long (Montara, Calif.) and Pieter DePape (Mountain View, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Embodiments provide a propeller ground stop mechanism configured to keep an unpowered propeller of an aircraft (e.g. when the aircraft is on the ground and not operating) static. The propeller is prevented from rotating due to external forces (e.g. an air flow caused by wind, manual rotation of the propeller). When the propeller is powered, and the propeller is providing thrust, the propeller ground st...