Hello, workshop.
Why a single inventor in Bangkok decided to file a foundational air-traffic protocol patent without an attorney — and what the next 18 months of public writing will look like.
Jittapol Prukpatarakul
VerSky Founder
This is the first post on the VerSky blog. It exists because the rest of the website explains what the protocol is — but says very little about how it came to be, what we got right, what we missed, and what's next.
The plan is to fix that here, one essay at a time.
§What this blog is
Four threads, alternating roughly every two weeks:
- Protocol Deep-Dives — the technical layer. Why altitude can encode direction. How the hex-cell capacity model handles asymmetric traffic. What
AACPnegotiates and what it deliberately doesn't. - Standards Watch — what ASTM F38, ICAO RPAS, and the ITU are actually doing. Most of this is slow, paper-shuffling work that no one writes about — which is exactly why someone should.
- Industry Pulse — funding, vehicles, and operator news, viewed through the lens of "does this need a protocol underneath it?"
- Patent Journey — the messy, expensive, slow, and very-occasionally-thrilling process of building IP from a one-person workshop.
§What this blog is not
A press-release pipeline. A thought-leadership performance. A vendor briefing surface.
We have a press page for press. We have a whitepaper for technical depth. We have a contact form for licensing. This is the long-form, no-rush channel for working in public.
§A note on what got us here
VerSky was filed pro se with USPTO on 27 February 2026 — two non-provisional applications, totalling 70+ claims:
| Application | Title | Claims |
|---|---|---|
| 19/551,620 | Altitude-Direction Encoding Protocol | 47 |
| 19/551,624 | AI Aerial Communication Protocol (AACP) | 33 |
Filing both pro se cost $800 in USPTO fees across many rounds of internal technical review. No outside funding. No patent attorney. No team.
That isn't a flex — it's a description of the experiment. Whether the experiment generalises to other foundational IP work is a question we'll get to in a future post.
What's safe to discuss
With both applications filed, the priority date is locked. Everything described in those applications — and broader concepts they support — is safe to discuss publicly without creating prior-art problems for future continuations. We're being deliberate about that boundary.
§Read the first arc
Three deep-dives ship alongside this announcement. Together they lay the technical foundation the rest of the blog will build on:
- Why altitude can carry information — the core novelty argument
- Hex cells, capacity, and the asymmetric-traffic problem — the spatial model that makes 4D reservations tractable
- What AACP actually does (and what it deliberately doesn't) — why an "AI protocol" needs deterministic fallback
From here on, the cadence will be honest: one essay every two weeks, plus the occasional shorter standards-note when something in ASTM F38, ICAO RPAS, or the ITU spectrum work merits a flag. If any of this is useful to you — as an engineer, regulator, founder, journalist, or curious bystander — subscribe below.
Welcome to the workshop. The lights are on.