Buttress Materials for Staple Lines Patents: Top Companies & Trends 2026
- 90.8% of all 2,080 records sit with just five assignees — this field is about as concentrated as surgical-instrument sub-fields get.
- Filings fell 79% from 94 in 2021 to 20 in 2024, the last year the data can treat as complete.
- A61B carries 90.8% of records while A61L (sterilising, 13.6%) and A61F (implants, 5.4%) mark the next densest claim territory.
Filing growth compares 2021 (94 records) with 2024 (20) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 2,080 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What buttress material patents actually cover
Staple line buttress technology sits at the intersection of a mechanical stapling device and a material science problem: how to attach, retain and eventually release a reinforcing strip so it reduces bleeding and leak risk without slowing the surgeon down. Patent claims in this space cluster around three jobs — attachment method (adhesives, retainers, clips), material behaviour (absorbable polymers, tissue ingrowth profiles) and handling at the point of use (pre-loading, cartridge compatibility, release timing). The dataset in scope spans 2,080 published records filed or published between 2015 and the 2026-07-31 cut-off.
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the most recent one to two years in any trend chart will always look thinner than the underlying filing activity actually was — a useful caveat when reading the year-by-year figures below.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 2,080-record dataset: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim weight.
Filing trend: a 2018 peak followed by a real pullback
Filings rose to a peak of 162 in 2018, then activity in the core 2021-2024 window fell from 94 to 20 records — a 79% drop over that three-year span. That decline should be read as a real slowdown in the mature part of the window, not as an artefact of the cut-off, since 2024 is the last year the dataset treats as complete; only 2025 and 2026 are still filling in.
IPC composition: surgery dominates, sterilising and implants trail
A61B (diagnosis and surgery) touches 90.8% of the 2,080 records, consistent with buttress material being claimed primarily as part of a surgical stapling system rather than as a standalone material. A61L (sterilising and disinfecting, 13.6%) and A61F (implants and prostheses, 5.4%) are the next-heaviest classes, with plastics-shaping (B29C, 2.2%) and data processing (G06F, 2.0%) showing that some filings now reach into manufacturing process and software-adjacent claims.
Shares are the percentage of the 2,080 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Buttress Materials for Staple Lines with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about buttress materials for staple lines and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited records anchoring this space
US7845533B2 — Detachable buttress material retention systems for use with a surgical stapling device
Systems of releasably connecting staple line buttress material to the jaws of a surgical stapling instrument are provided. The systems include retainers configured to engage the buttress material and releasably retain the buttress material on the jaws of the surgical stapling instrument prior to stapling tissue. In certain embodiments, the retainers remain with the jaws of the instrument after stapling of tissue. In alternative embodiments, the retainers remain with the buttress material after being stapled to tissue.Filed by Covidien LP, published 2010-12-07 — one of the five most-cited records in this dataset, with 2,274 citations.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6656193B2 | Device for attachment of buttress material to a surgical fastening device | 2,729 |
| 2 | US6503257B2 | Method for releasing buttress material attached to a surgical fastening device | 2,629 |
| 3 | US6592597B2 | Adhesive for attaching buttress material to a surgical fastening device | 2,522 |
| 4 | US8157151B2 | Staple line reinforcement for anvil and cartridge | 2,507 |
| 5 | US7845533B2 | Detachable buttress material retention systems for use with a surgical stapling device | 2,274 |
| 6 | US8016177B2 | Staple buttress retention system | 2,261 |
| 7 | US7547312B2 | Circular stapler buttress | 2,181 |
| 8 | US20120248169A1 | Methods for forming tissue thickness compensator arrangements for surgical staplers | 2,161 |
| 9 | US20050059997A1 | Circular stapler buttress | 2,160 |
| 10 | US20130153641A1 | Releasable layer of material and surgical end effector having the same | 2,134 |
Citation counts inside this corpus favour older filings that have had more time to accumulate references — treat them as a signal of influence on later filers, not as a measure of current commercial importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three signals worth weighing before drafting new claims in this space.
Five companies hold nearly all the claim space
Top 5 assignees together account for 1,889 of the 2,080 records in scope, and the top 10 reach 97.6%. A ranking this concentrated means most freedom-to-operate questions in this field resolve to a small handful of portfolios, not a long tail of independent inventors.
Core filing activity has genuinely slowed
After peaking at 162 filings in 2018, activity across the last complete three-year window dropped sharply. That decline sits inside years the dataset treats as settled, so it reads as a real pullback in new filing rather than a cut-off artefact.
Sterilising and implant classes are the secondary battleground
Beyond the dominant A61B surgical class, A61L and A61F carry the next-heaviest share of claims, pointing to sterilisation compatibility and implant-grade material behaviour as the two areas where secondary claim value is being built.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to buttress materials for staple lines, with the prior art for and against each one.
Assignee landscape and where to look for openings
The ranked assignee list covers 54 companies across the full 2,080-record dataset; almost all volume sits with the leaders, but the pattern also shows where new entrants have found room to file.
One assignee holds nearly a third of all records
The leading assignee's 677 records dwarf the fifth-place holder's 87, showing a steep drop-off rather than a gradual one. Freedom-to-operate work in this field should start with that portfolio's attachment-method and retention claims.
The drop from top 10 to the rest is steep
Top 10 assignees combined hold 97.6% of all 2,080 records, leaving the remaining 44 ranked companies to split roughly 2.4% between them. New entrants below the top 10 are filing in narrow, specific niches rather than broad platform claims.
Momentum has cooled across nearly every major assignee
Recent-year filing counts for the tracked leading assignees sit at zero or one, consistent with the broader 2021-2024 pullback rather than any single company retreating from the space.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Tepha Inc | 1 | — |
| Covidien LP | 0 | — |
| Ethicon Endo-Surgery Inc | 0 | — |
| Ethicon Endo-Surgery LLC | 0 | — |
| ETHICON ENDO SURGERY LLC | 0 | — |
| Cilag GmbH International | 0 | -100% |
| Standard Bariatrics Inc | 0 | -100% |
| SHELTON IV FREDERICK E | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a concentrated field with a cooling filing rate — the next steps depend on whether you are clearing freedom-to-operate or looking for open claim space.
Run a freedom-to-operate check against the leading portfolios
With 90.8% of records held by five assignees, any new stapling-and-buttress product should be checked against those specific portfolios before drafting, not against the field in general.
Explore assignee portfolios in Eureka →Draft around the under-claimed branches
Sterilisation compatibility, ingrowth-tuned absorbable materials and manufacturing process claims show thinner density than core attachment and retention claims — a reasonable place to start a design-around search.
Map white space in Eureka →Common questions on buttress material patents
The assignee ranking in this dataset is highly concentrated: the leading company alone holds 677 of the 2,080 records in scope, with the top five assignees together accounting for 90.8% of all records. That leaves the remaining 49 ranked companies competing for a small residual share, so freedom-to-operate diligence in this field should focus heavily on the top few portfolios rather than spreading across dozens of smaller filers.
No — filings peaked at 162 in 2018 and then declined through the last complete three-year window, falling from 94 in 2021 to 20 in 2024, a 79% drop. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 figures in any chart will still rise as more records publish, but the 2021-2024 decline itself sits in years the data treats as settled.
The dominant class is A61B (diagnosis and surgery), appearing in 90.8% of the 2,080 records, reflecting that buttress material is usually claimed as part of a surgical stapling system. A61L (sterilising and disinfecting) covers 13.6% and A61F (implants and prostheses) covers 5.4%, with smaller shares in plastics shaping, data processing and nailing-tool classes. Because a single record can carry several IPC codes, these shares add up to more than 100%.
US7845533B2, assigned to Covidien LP and published 2010-12-07, claims systems for releasably connecting staple line buttress material to the jaws of a surgical stapling instrument, including retainers that can remain with either the instrument or the buttress material after stapling. It is among the most-cited records in this dataset, with 2,274 citations, making it a foundational reference for attachment-and-release mechanisms that later filers had to design around or build on.
The densest claim territory sits in core surgical attachment and retention (A61B), so the thinner areas are secondary classes such as sterilising compatibility, ingrowth-tuned absorbable material formulations, and manufacturing process claims under plastics shaping. These branches carry meaningfully lower filing shares than the dominant surgical class, suggesting more room for a first claim that is specific rather than platform-level.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
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Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.