Capillary and Microsampling Devices Patents: Leaders & Gaps 2026
Capillary and Microsampling Device Patents: Who Holds the Ground and Where It's Still Open
Concentrated at the top. The five leading assignees hold 49.4% of all 314 records in scope, and the top ten hold 69.7% — a narrow set of families sets the terms for most new filers. Filings peaked at 45 in 2019, dipped, then recovered to a comparable level: 26 in 2021 climbing to 27 in 2024, a +4% gain over that span. Treat 2025 and 2026 figures as incomplete rather than declining, given the usual publication lag.
- 1QUEST DIAGNOSTICS INVESTMENTS INC46
- 2JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY38
- 3CEDARS SINAI MEDICAL CENT31
- 4METABOLOMIC DIAGNOSTICS LEMITED24
- 5HUMMINGBIRD DIAGNOSTICS GMBH16
See the full capillary and microsampling devices 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 about this landscape
Who are the leading patent holders in capillary and microsampling devices?
The ranking covers 77 assignees, and the field is concentrated rather than fragmented: the top five hold 49.4% of the 314 records in scope, and the top ten hold 69.7%. The single leading assignee holds 46 records, close to three times the fifth-place figure of 16. That said, recent-year momentum data shows some of the largest historical filers with zero filings in the latest year, so leadership by cumulative count does not always mean current activity.
Is patent filing in this space still growing?
Filings rose from 26 in 2021 to 27 in 2024, a +4% gain over the last three-year span with reasonably complete publication data. Activity peaked earlier, at 45 filings in 2019, then settled to a lower but stable level rather than continuing to climb. Figures for 2025 and 2026 look lower still, but that reflects the roughly 18-month lag between filing and publication, not a real drop in activity.
What does US20180135135A1 actually cover?
This filing, held by Quest Diagnostics Investments and filed in 2018, describes methods for detecting hereditary cancer-related DNA mutations in small-volume dried biological fluid samples collected with a volumetric absorptive microsampling device, referencing the Mitra tip format specifically. It is framed around therapy-selection decisions for patients with or at risk of cancers including breast, ovarian, colon and skin cancer. Anyone building a diagnostic workflow around microsampling plus mutation detection for treatment-selection purposes should read this filing’s claims closely rather than only its abstract.
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 Capillary and Microsampling Devices 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.