Cardiovascular Interventional Devices Patents: Leaders & Trends 2026
- Filings peaked in 2017 at 66 and have declined since, with the midpoint year 2022 at 36 — a maturing rather than expanding filing curve.
- A61F implants and prostheses dominate at 457 of 563 records, while A61M body-fluid devices (158) and A61B diagnosis/surgery (77) trail well behind.
- Even long-standing names show flat or negative momentum in the latest year, including a filer at -100% YoY, signalling the field is consolidating around existing claims rather than expanding into new ones.
What this landscape covers
This dataset tracks 563 patent families filed between 2015 and 2026 across cardiovascular stents, transcatheter valves and interventional catheters, filtered to claims touching drug elution, radial force, deliverability, restenosis or biocompatible coating. The technology classification concentrates heavily in A61F (implants and prostheses) and A61M (devices for administering media to the body), with smaller but present activity in diagnostic/surgical instrumentation and sterilisation-related coatings.
Filing activity peaked in 2017 and has trended downward since, a pattern more consistent with claim consolidation around established device architectures than with an emerging or fast-growing niche. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the last one to two years in any trend chart will understate real filing activity and should be read with that discount in mind.
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Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 563-family dataset: how filing volume has moved year over year, and how the underlying claims split across IPC subclasses.
A declining filing curve since 2017
From a peak of 66 families in 2017 to 4 in the most recent (partial) year, with the 2022 midpoint at 36, the curve points to a technology area where the core architectures are largely staked out rather than one still absorbing new entrants.
Implant and delivery-device claims dominate
A61F (457 records) and A61M (158) together account for the large majority of filings, with A61B surgical/diagnostic claims (77) and A61L coating/sterilisation claims (39) forming smaller but distinct clusters worth tracking separately from the core stent and valve architecture claims.
Shares are the percentage of the 563 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Cardiovascular Interventional Devices with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about cardiovascular interventional devices and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited records and a representative filing
Segmented transcatheter valve prosthesis having an unsupported valve segment (US20170265998A1, Medtronic, 2017-09-21)
The filing describes a transcatheter valve prosthesis built from a tubular fabric body with inflow and outflow tubular scaffolds attached at either end, and a prosthetic valve component secured to an intermediate, deliberately unsupported section of that fabric body. Because neither scaffold surrounds the intermediate segment, the valve component sits in a section of the device with different mechanical behaviour from the scaffolded ends.Abstract condensed from the original filing for length.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US7326236B2 | Devices and methods for controlling and indicating the length of an interventional element | 822 |
| 2 | US20140194981A1 | Anti-Paravalvular Leakage Components for a Transcatheter Valve Prosthesis | 661 |
| 3 | US20050149159A1 | Devices and methods for controlling and indicating the length of an interventional element | 633 |
| 4 | US5474563A | Cardiovascular stent and retrieval apparatus | 594 |
| 5 | US20060282150A1 | Devices and methods for operating and controlling interventional apparatus | 565 |
| 6 | US20090054976A1 | Stent loading tool and method for use thereof | 549 |
| 7 | US20110208283A1 | Transcatheter valve structure and methods for valve delivery | 482 |
| 8 | US20110245911A1 | Transcatheter Valve with Torsion Spring Fixation and Related Systems and Methods | 428 |
| 9 | US20150173782A1 | Methods and Systems for Treatment of Acute Ischemic Stroke | 375 |
| 10 | US20140277419A1 | Anti-Paravalvular Leakage Component for a Transcatheter Valve Prosthesis | 364 |
Citation counts inside a searched corpus favour older filings that have had more time to accumulate citations; treat them as a measure of influence on subsequent filings, not of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers indicate
Three patterns emerge from the filing trend, technology split and receiving-office data that matter for anyone deciding where to file or partner next.
The curve has turned downward
Filings ran from 66 in 2017 down through a 2022 midpoint of 36 to 4 in the most recent partial year. Even allowing for publication lag understating the last year or two, the multi-year direction is flat-to-declining rather than growing.
Implant and prosthesis claims crowd the space
A61F alone covers over four-fifths of the corpus, meaning most competitive pressure sits in stent and valve scaffold architecture rather than in delivery systems or coatings, where A61M and A61L activity is comparatively thin.
US and European filing dominate the corpus
The United States (235) and the EPO (120) account for the bulk of receiving offices, with PCT (67), Australia (42), Canada (20) and Austria (18) forming a secondary tier — a filing footprint typical of devices requiring regulatory clearance in major device markets before wider geographic expansion.
Established filers are pulling back, not accelerating
Recent-year momentum among named assignees skews to zero or negative, including one long-standing entity at -100% year-over-year. This is consistent with a field where core claim territory is already held rather than one where incumbents are racing to expand it.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to cardiovascular interventional devices, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the claim territory
Assignee activity in this corpus is concentrated among a small set of established device manufacturers, with recent-year filing counts flat or declining across nearly all of them — a sign the core architectures are held rather than contested.
The largest filer is slowing, not accelerating
The most active named assignee in this corpus recorded only 1 filing in the latest year, down 50% year over year, a pattern that recurs across most of the other tracked assignees at zero latest-year filings.
Co-assignee filing is narrow and inventor-linked
Only ten co-assignee pairs appear in the dataset, with the strongest repeated pairings linking a single corporate assignee to named individual inventors rather than to other companies — indicative of internal inventor teams rather than cross-company joint filing.
A long tail behind a small set of repeat filers
The assignee ranking spans the full 563-family set, and momentum data shows most named assignees sitting at zero latest-year filings — consistent with a small core of repeat filers holding the majority of the historically active claim space, with a long tail of low-frequency entrants.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Medtronic, Inc. | 1 | -50% |
| Symetis SA | 0 | — |
| Medinol Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Medtronic Vascular, Inc. | 0 | — |
| MEDTRONIC CV LUXEMBOURG SARL | 0 | -100% |
| St. Jude Medical Cardiology Division, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Medical92, Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Xtent, Inc. | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, partnership targeting or white-space filing.
Run a freedom-to-operate check on scaffold geometry
With 457 of 563 records classed under A61F, any new stent or valve scaffold design should be checked against this cluster specifically rather than the corpus as a whole.
Explore claims in Eureka →Track momentum, not cumulative rank
Several long-standing assignees show flat or negative latest-year filing counts; monitoring who is still actively filing matters more here than historical volume.
Set up assignee tracking in Eureka →Assess the under-claimed coating and delivery branches
A61L and A61M activity is comparatively thin next to A61F, suggesting coating chemistry and deliverability claims may have more open space than core scaffold architecture.
Map white space in Eureka →Common questions on this landscape
This corpus of 563 patent families is concentrated among a small set of established device manufacturers with long filing histories in stents, transcatheter valves and interventional catheters. However, recent-year momentum data shows most of these same assignees filing zero or fewer new families in the latest tracked year, including one major filer down 50% year over year and another down 100%. That means historical ranking and current activity diverge: a company with the largest cumulative count is not necessarily the one still actively expanding its claim position today.
Filings in this dataset peaked at 66 in 2017 and fell to 4 by the most recent partial year, with a 2022 midpoint of 36. A downward trend of this shape typically reflects consolidation around established device architectures rather than a shrinking market, since core stent and valve designs have already been extensively claimed. Note also that publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the final one or two years in any such trend chart will always look thinner than the true filing activity turns out to be.
A61F, covering implants and prostheses, accounts for 457 of the 563 records in this corpus, making it by far the largest technology cluster. A61M, devices for administering media to the body, follows at 158 records, with A61B diagnostic and surgical instrumentation at 77 and A61L sterilisation and coating-related claims at 39. This distribution indicates that scaffold and prosthesis architecture is the most heavily claimed territory, while coating chemistry and delivery-system engineering carry comparatively lighter claim density.
Based on the IPC composition, the branches with comparatively thin claim density relative to A61F scaffold architecture include biocompatible coating chemistry, restenosis-targeted drug elution profiles, deliverability-optimised catheter shaft design and paravalvular leak sealing components. These are not empty fields, but they carry markedly fewer records than the core stent and valve scaffold cluster. Any filing strategy in these branches should still run a citation and prior-art check against the specific most-cited records in the space before committing claim language.
US20170265998A1, assigned to Medtronic and filed in 2017, claims a transcatheter valve prosthesis with a tubular fabric body where the valve component sits in an intermediate segment left deliberately unsupported by either the inflow or outflow scaffold. Anyone designing a segmented valve with a similarly unsupported valve-bearing zone between two scaffolded ends should review this filing's claim scope closely, since that specific structural arrangement is the core of what is claimed. A workable design-around would need the valve component to be supported differently, for example integrated within a scaffolded region rather than an unsupported intermediate section.
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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.