Autoinjector design and human factors patents: mapping who holds the claim space
Concentrated at the top. The top 5 assignees hold 49.2% of all 7,895 records in scope, and the top 10 hold 58.0% — a small group controls most of the filed claim space. Filings peaked at 429 in 2017 and eased to 312 by 2021 and 288 by 2024 — an 8% decline over that three-year window. 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete due to publication lag and should not be read as a continued drop.
- 1SANOFI AVENTIS DEUT GMBH27.5%
- 2SANOFI SA(FR)14.6%
- 3BECTON DICKINSON & CO2.7%
- 4SHL MEDICAL AG2.3%
- 5REGENERON PHARMACEUTICALS INC2.2%
See the full autoinjector design and human factors analysis in Eureka
- The complete ranking, not just the top five
- Every IPC branch with its share of the corpus
- The most-cited records, and where claim space is still thin
Common questions on autoinjector patents
Who holds the most autoinjector patents?
Filing in this field is concentrated: the leading assignee alone accounts for 2,172 of the 7,895 records in scope, well ahead of the fifth-place filer at 174. The top 5 assignees together hold 49.2% of all records, and the top 10 hold 58.0%. This pattern is typical of drug-delivery device art, where large pharmaceutical and device manufacturers file broadly around their commercial platforms while a long tail of smaller entrants files narrower, single-mechanism claims.
Is autoinjector patent filing activity growing or slowing?
Filings peaked at 429 in 2017 and eased to 312 by 2021 and 288 by 2024, an 8% decline over that three-year span. That is a gradual cooling in an already dense field rather than a collapse. Figures for 2025 and 2026 are still incomplete because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so those years should not yet be read as confirming a continued slowdown.
What technology areas dominate autoinjector patent claims?
The large majority of records, 74.9% of the 7,895 in scope, sit in IPC subclass A61M, covering devices for administering body fluids — the mechanical core of the autoinjector itself. Diagnosis and surgery (A61B) and medicinal preparations (A61K) each cover around 5% of records, while software-adjacent classes like healthcare informatics (G16H) and digital data processing (G06F) remain under 3%. Since a record can carry multiple IPC classes, these figures do not need to sum to 100%.
Disclaimer. This analysis is based on Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent records and is provided for general information and reference only. Patent data carries inherent limitations — recent filings are under-counted because of publication lag, counts may be on a record or family basis, classification and applicant-name data may contain errors or duplicates, and the underlying search query defines the scope shown — so the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing here is an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Verify independently and review with qualified patent and legal professionals before acting on it.
Method: Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Autoinjector Design and Human Factors covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish. Every share divides by all records in scope. Data: Patsnap Eureka. See the full landscape report.