[CRConrad]

Sounds like automobiles are -- have been, until now -- an even more long-lasting example. The basic recipe has been the same for over a century: Four wheels, two to five doors, steering wheel and other controls at one of the front seats, internal combustion engine.

Only now is one of those components, the engine, being changed out. And looking at that from this perspective, it's apparently not as humongous a change as many are now claiming: For one thing, it's just one of the four (or more?) parts of the basic recipe; for another, it's not all that new -- electric motors are in wide use elsewhere, and were one of the alternatives in rather wide use in cars, too, before the industry settled on the current recipe ~a hundred years ago.

Anyway, the "beholden to them alone" bit doesn't seem to apply to the automotive industry, since pretty much all manufacturers are in on the switch-to-electrics idea. Which begs the question: Would there really be so much of a customer lock-in in the aeronautic space either? Just like the idea of driving cars by electric motors is unpatentable, what could Boeing (or anyone else) come up with in the basic design of an aeroplane that isn't too general an idea to be protectable, or (most probably) hasn't been tried before?