Coronary Guidewire Design Patents: Who's Filing and Where Claim Space Is Still Open
23.1% concentration at the top. The five most active assignees hold 2,357 of the 10,185 records in scope — a leading cluster, not a monopoly, with room for the rest of the field to compete on specific mechanisms. Annual filings rose to a peak of 483 in 2019, then eased to 251 by 2024, a -37% change over the 2021-2024 span. Counts for 2025 and 2026 are still low in this dataset because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months — treat the most recent one to two years as incomplete rather than as evidence of a slowdown.
- 1BOSTON SCIENTIFIC SCIMED INC9.9%
- 2BOSTON SCI LTD3.8%
- 3MICROVENTION INC3.2%
- 4COVIDIEN LP3.2%
- 5ABBOTT CARDIOVASCULAR SYSTEMS INC3.0%
See the full coronary guidewire design 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 coronary guidewire patents
Who holds the most coronary guidewire patents?
One assignee leads the ranking with 1,004 records, well ahead of the fifth-place holder at 301 and tenth place at 171. The top five combined account for 23.1% of the 10,185 records in scope, and the top ten reach 32.6%. Beyond that, activity spreads across a long tail of smaller filers, so no single company controls the field outright.
Is coronary guidewire patent filing activity increasing or decreasing?
Filings peaked in 2019 at 483 and have since pulled back, with a -37% change measured between 2021 and 2024. However, publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so the 2025 and 2026 figures in any dataset are still filling in and should not be read as proof of continued decline. Treat 2024 as the most recent complete year for trend judgements.
What technology areas do coronary guidewire patents cover?
The majority of records fall under A61M (devices for body fluids, 57.4% of records) and A61B (diagnosis and surgery, 56.0%), with A61F implant-related claims covering 28.3%. Because a single patent can carry multiple IPC codes, these shares add up to more than 100%. Mechanical wire-fabrication classes like B21F and B23K each cover under 1% of records, a noticeably thinner layer relative to the systems built around the wire.
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 Coronary Guidewire Design 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.