The question of definitions, inventorship and Patents is very complex and open to interpretation, and being an inventor and Patent holder myself I know a little about it. For one thing, all mechanical inventions and devices are effectively developments and groupings of just two ancient inventions: the lever and the wheel. Therefore legally all mechanical inventions (for example a plane's control surfaces) could technically be classed as "Obvious" and therefore non patentable!
Really, up to about the middle of the 20th Century the US Patent Office was notorious for being too exclusive on some occasions and far too inclusive on others. Countless Patents were granted without any clear reference to other "Prior Art" (for example Patents already existing in other territories). Patents were also frequently granted when there was clearly a conflict of interest or partiality for one claimant over another.
Edison was particularly adept at exploiting the weaknesses and lack of impartiality of the US Patent Office, and his skills of manipulation,
PR and plagiarism were at least as significant as his inventiveness!
I would therefore NOT rely exclusively on any US Patent at the time of the Wrights for deciding who invented what.
As an example of how people's perception of "inventions" can be misinformed, most people think of James Watt as the inventor of the Steam Engine
However, decades earlier in 1712 Newcomen built the first Atmospheric Engine, a steam engine powered by condensing the steam rather than by the pressure of the steam.
Newcomen could not have made his engine without the earlier work of Denys Papin who invented the cylinder, piston and "Digester" (Pressure Cooker).
Papin built on the earlier work of Boyle, and particular Savery's "Minor's Friend" or "Fire Engine", (a steam pump for mines). No doubt Savery was probably aware of the ancient steam device designed by Hero of Alexandria, and Hero probably knew of "prior art" to his whirlygig.
I see the Wright Bothers and all other "first to fly" claimants in a very comparable context to the above. They were not isolated inventive geniuses but part of a process which had been going on for hundreds of years before them, and is still going on today.
Today's aviation is so far removed from the remarkably short period in which the various "first flights" were claimed. The current "invention", development and improvement in aviation is now done more by teams of scientists and technologists, so perhaps since Whittle no single person has become publicly famous as a significant aviation "inventor", but I for one am profoundly grateful that I can now fly anywhere in the world in virtually complete safety.
I regard the arguments for and against specific "first to fly" claimants, and the partisan hero worship of the various specific individuals is a distraction from a full understanding of how humanity figured out how to fly.