Capillary and Microsampling Devices Patents: Leaders & Gaps 2026
- 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.
- Filing has kept climbing, not just held. From 2021 to 2024, the last fully comparable years, filings rose from 26 to 27, a +4% gain even as later years are still being published.
- Material analysis dominates the claim space. G01N (material analysis and testing) touches 64.3% of the 314 records, far ahead of the next-largest class, C12Q at 18.8%.
Filing growth compares 2021 (26 records) with 2024 (27) — 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 314 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Capillary and microsampling devices sit at the intersection of collection hardware and assay chemistry: a small-volume draw has to survive transport, correct for hematocrit effect, and still bridge to a validated lab assay. The 314 records in scope span 2015 through the current cut-off, drawn from filings that combine capillary blood sampling, volumetric absorptive microsampling and related dried-blood-spot terms with downstream concerns like sample volume, home collection and assay bridging.
Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the most recent one or two years in any trend understate real filing activity rather than signal a slowdown.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 314 records: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses the claims actually sit in.
Filings rose through the early period and have held since
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.
Material analysis and testing anchors the field
G01N covers 64.3% of the 314 records — more than three times the next class, C12Q at 18.8%. A61K, A61B and B01L each cover a meaningful minority, showing that claims extend from the raw analytical method into formulation, diagnostic procedure and lab hardware, but the analytical core is where density is highest.
Shares are the percentage of the 314 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Capillary and Microsampling Devices with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about capillary and microsampling devices and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe records other filings build on
Methods for detecting DNA mutations using mitra tip extraction
The disclosure provides methods for determining whether a patient exhibiting cancer symptoms, or at risk for hereditary cancers such as breast, ovarian, colon or skin cancer, will benefit from treatment with one or more therapeutic agents, based on detecting hereditary cancer-related mutations in small-volume dried biological fluid samples collected using a volumetric absorptive microsampling device.US20180135135A1 — Quest Diagnostics Investments — filed 2018-05-17
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20030195435A1 | Method and apparatus for collecting and transporting capillary blood samples for diagnostic and research eval… | 118 |
| 2 | US20080179301A1 | Systems and methods for etching materials | 97 |
| 3 | US20090054222A1 | Systems and methods for robotic transport | 52 |
| 4 | US7787681B2 | Systems and methods for robotic transport | 43 |
| 5 | US20160349221A1 | Methods for mass spectrometric quantitation of analytes extracted from a microsampling device | 41 |
| 6 | WO2018136825A1 | Highly multiplexed and mass spectrometry based methods to measuring 72 human proteins | 40 |
| 7 | US20110176051A1 | System and method for focusing optics | 37 |
| 8 | US20080181473A1 | Systems and methods for high-throughput radiation biodosimetry | 36 |
| 9 | US7822249B2 | Systems and methods for high-throughput radiation biodosimetry | 29 |
| 10 | US7898673B2 | Systems and methods for focusing optics | 28 |
Citation counts reflect influence inside this searched corpus and skew toward older records; they are not a measure of current commercial weight.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three patterns worth acting on before drafting a new application in this space.
The top of the field is narrow and stable
Five assignees hold roughly half of all records in scope, and the leading assignee alone accounts for 46 records against a fifth-place figure of 16. A new entrant is not filing into open ground at the analytical core — it is filing next to a small number of dense portfolios.
Activity has held rather than cooled
The three-year comparison from 2021 to 2024 — the last years with reasonably complete publication — shows filings essentially flat with modest growth, not a technology past its peak. The apparent drop after 2024 is a publication-lag artefact, not a real decline.
Claims cluster on the analytical method, not the hardware alone
G01N (material analysis and testing) appears in 64.3% of the 314 records, well ahead of C12Q enzymatic/DNA testing at 18.8% and A61K medicinal preparations at 14.0%. Device-only claims that skip the analytical method risk sitting in a thinner, more contestable slice of the landscape.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to capillary and microsampling devices, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and who has gone quiet
The ranking covers 77 companies as returned by the data endpoint — not a top-50 or top-100 cut — and recent-year momentum diverges sharply even among the leaders.
One assignee sets the pace, but has gone quiet recently
The leading assignee's 46-record count is nearly triple the fifth-place figure of 16, yet recent-year momentum data shows several of the largest historical filers, including this one, at zero filings in the latest year — a sign the core portfolio is mature rather than actively expanding.
New activity is coming from smaller filers
One diagnostics-focused assignee shows +100% year-over-year growth in the latest year, moving from a low base of filings. That kind of swing is easy to overstate on small numbers, but it marks where fresh claim activity is actually happening while larger incumbents sit still.
Academic-medical pairs anchor the collaboration network
Co-filing here is limited — 10 pairs total — and concentrated around a university-hospital pairing sharing 5 records, with two other university pairings each sharing 2. This is a field where most families are filed solo rather than jointly.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Metabolomic Diagnostics Limited | 2 | +100% |
| Quest Diagnostics Investments | 0 | — |
| Johns Hopkins University | 0 | — |
| Cedars-Sinai Medical Center | 0 | -100% |
| Hummingbird Diagnostics GmbH | 0 | — |
| Max Planck Society (Max Planck Gesellschaft) | 0 | — |
| ANSH LABS LLC | 0 | — |
| The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The landscape points to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, portfolio strategy, or identifying open claim space.
Run a freedom-to-operate check against the leading families
With 49.4% of records held by five assignees, a new sampling-device or hematocrit-correction claim needs to be checked against those portfolios specifically, not the field as a whole.
Explore assignee portfolios in EurekaDraft into the under-claimed branches
Transport stability and assay-bridging validation carry lighter filing density than the G01N analytical core, making them a more open place to stake a first claim.
Map white space in EurekaTrack momentum, not just headline counts
The leading assignee has gone quiet while a smaller filer posted +100% YoY growth — portfolio monitoring should follow direction of travel, not just cumulative totals.
Set up assignee alerts in EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
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.
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.
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.
Compared to the dense G01N analytical core, which touches 64.3% of the 314 records, areas like transport-stability additives for dried matrices, hematocrit-independent volumetric correction, and assay-bridging validation protocols show visibly thinner filing activity. These are not unclaimed, but the claim density is lower, which typically means more room to file a defensible first claim without stacking directly on an incumbent's language. Co-filing data also shows only 10 collaboration pairs total, suggesting few established joint-development templates to compete against in these branches.
Receiving-office data shows the United States leading with 83 filings, followed by the European Patent Office at 71 and the WIPO/PCT route at 69. Australia, Canada and Germany each show a smaller but non-trivial share. This spread indicates that meaningful protection in this field typically requires a multi-jurisdiction strategy rather than a single home-market filing, particularly given the PCT volume.
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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.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
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.