Drug-Eluting Stent Patents: Leaders, Trends & White Space 2026
- Filing has cooled sharply. annual filings fell from a peak of 260 in 2017 to single digits by the end of the window, with the 2022 midpoint already down to 45 — this is a maturing claim space, not a growing one.
- Coatings and sterilisation dominate the IPC mix. A61L (sterilising & disinfecting) and A61F (implants & prostheses) lead the technology composition, ahead of the drug-chemistry classes A61K and C07D.
- Recent-year momentum has gone flat across the board. every tracked assignee shows zero filings in the latest year, including firms with double-digit co-assignee ties, which points to consolidation rather than fresh entrants.
Filing growth compares 2021 (73 records) with 2024 (24) — 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 4,820 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
A device category built on coating chemistry and implant mechanics
Drug-eluting stent patents sit at the intersection of polymer coating science, drug-release kinetics and implant mechanics. The search corpus spans 4,820 patent families filed between 2015 and 2026, concentrated in IPC classes covering sterilisation and coating (A61L), implants and prostheses (A61F), and medicinal preparations (A61K). That mix reflects how the field is actually engineered: a bare-metal or polymer stent framework, a drug-containing layer, and a release profile tuned for a therapeutic window measured in weeks rather than months.
Filing activity peaked in 2017 and has declined every year since, with the most recent year understated because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months. Receiving-office data shows the United States as the dominant venue, followed by the EPO and WIPO's PCT route, with Canada and Australia trailing as secondary filing destinations.
Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 4,820-family dataset: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density.
A field past its filing peak
Annual filings ran as high as 260 in 2017, dropped to 45 by the 2022 midpoint, and sit near single digits toward the end of the window. Treat the final one to two years as undercounted rather than as evidence of a cliff, since examination and publication delay recent filings from appearing yet.
Coating and implant classes lead
A61L (sterilising & disinfecting) and A61F (implants & prostheses) are the two largest subclasses, each appearing in roughly half the corpus, ahead of the drug-formulation classes A61K and C07D and the narrower coating-process class B05D. That ordering says the mechanical and coating layer is more heavily claimed than the underlying drug chemistry.
Shares are the percentage of the 4,820 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Drug-Eluting Stent Cardiac Devices with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about drug-eluting stent cardiac devices and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe prior art that gets cited most
Drug eluting stent and method of use for enabling restoration of functional endothelial cell layers
Filed by Sino Medical Sciences Technology, this application describes a stent framework carrying a biocompatible base layer and a drug-containing layer with deliberately uneven coating thickness, tuned to dissolve between 45 and 60 days after implantation. Claims cover methods of making and verifying long-term coating stability as well as predicting long-term efficacy and patient safety post-implantation.Published 2019-12-05.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20040167572A1 | Coated medical devices | 1,968 |
| 2 | US7108701B2 | Drug releasing anastomosis devices and methods for treating anastomotic sites | 1,778 |
| 3 | US20070010702A1 | Medical device with low magnetic susceptibility | 1,509 |
| 4 | US8273404B2 | Extraction of solvents from drug containing polymer reservoirs | 1,351 |
| 5 | US6852122B2 | Coated endovascular AAA device | 1,338 |
| 6 | US7101394B2 | Energetically-controlled delivery of biologically active material from an implanted medical device | 1,269 |
| 7 | US7527632B2 | Modified delivery device for coated medical devices | 1,109 |
| 8 | US6335029B1 | Polymeric coatings for controlled delivery of active agents | 1,065 |
| 9 | US20120016467A1 | Polymer-based, sustained release drug delivery system | 1,011 |
| 10 | US20160082161A1 | Drug-eluting medical devices | 1,004 |
Citation counts favour older filings that have had more time to accumulate citations inside this searched corpus; read them as markers of influence on the field's vocabulary, not as a ranking 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 mean for a filing decision
Three read-throughs from the trend and composition data that matter more to a filing strategy than the raw counts.
The category has already crested
A peak of 260 filings in 2017 falling to a midpoint of 45 in 2022 and near-zero by the end of the window is a maturity signal, not a data gap alone. New entrants filing broad platform claims now are filing into dense prior art rather than open ground.
Coating claims are the densest layer
A61L and A61F together cover the largest share of the corpus, meaning the physical stent structure and its coating process are more heavily claimed than the drug payload itself. Freedom-to-operate work should start with coating and sterilisation claims, not drug chemistry.
US filing dominates, PCT is the secondary route
The United States accounts for the largest single share of receiving-office filings, with Europe and the WIPO PCT route as the next tier. Canada and Australia see meaningfully fewer filings, useful context for deciding where enforcement risk actually concentrates.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to drug-eluting stent cardiac devices, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| Cordis Corporation | Cardinal Health 529, LLC | 28 |
| Abbott Laboratories | CROMACK KEITH R | 25 |
| Abbott Laboratories | BURKE SANDRA E | 24 |
| Medtronic Vascular (Michel Technologies) | MCCLAIN JAMES B | 19 |
| Abbott Laboratories | TONER JOHN L | 18 |
| Abbott Laboratories | MACK MATTHEW | 18 |
| Medtronic Vascular (Michel Technologies) | TAYLOR DOUGLAS | 17 |
| Cordis Corporation | Wyeth | 11 |
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear in the dataset, and the strongest pairs cluster around a small number of established device makers, suggesting most development happens in-house rather than through joint filing arrangements.
Assignee landscape: flat momentum across the board
Every assignee tracked for recent-year momentum shows zero filings in the latest year, several with a full -100% year-over-year drop. That is consistent with the overall filing decline rather than a company-specific retreat, but it changes how a competitive-intelligence read should treat 'active' assignees in this space.
No assignee is currently filing at volume
Recent-year momentum data shows every major assignee, including firms with strong historical filing counts, at zero in the most recent tracked year. Some show an explicit -100% year-over-year change, reinforcing that this is a corpus in run-off rather than active buildout.
Joint filings are rare and concentrated
The strongest co-assignee pairs pair a device company with either a distribution partner or named individual inventors, at counts in the 24-28 range. This points to a small number of long-running collaborations rather than a broad partnering pattern across the field.
Europe is the clear second venue after the US
With 817 filings at the EPO against 1,468 in the US, European coverage is substantial but secondary. Canada and Australia, each under 300, are worth checking for gaps before assuming global coverage from a US or EPO grant.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Cordis Corporation | 0 | — |
| Medtronic Vascular (Michel Technologies) | 0 | — |
| Abbott Laboratories | 0 | — |
| Sequent Medical Therapeutics Ltd. | 0 | -100% |
| LUTONIX INC | 0 | — |
| Universal Medical Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Janssen Pharmaceutica | 0 | — |
| Abbott Cardiovascular Systems Inc. | 0 | — |
Where to take this next
The trend and composition data point to a mature, consolidated field. The next steps depend on whether you're clearing a design or scouting a gap.
Run a freedom-to-operate check on coating claims
Given how densely A61L and A61F are claimed, a new coating or framework design should be checked against this subset before drug-release chemistry.
Explore in EurekaMap the under-claimed branches to your own pipeline
Bioresorbable scaffolds and variable-thickness coating profiles show thinner filing density than the core categories and may offer more room to file distinct claims.
Explore in EurekaVerify recent filings beyond the publication lag
Because the last one to two years of filings are undercounted due to publication delay, confirm current activity with a live search rather than relying on the trend chart alone.
Explore in EurekaCommon questions about drug-eluting stent patents
Assignee concentration data for this corpus shows filing activity spread across several long-established device and pharmaceutical companies rather than a single dominant holder, with recent-year momentum flat across all of them. The strongest co-assignee relationships, at 24 to 28 shared filings, cluster around a small number of firms that have worked with the same partners repeatedly over the years. Because every tracked assignee shows zero filings in the latest year, current 'leadership' reflects historical filing volume more than active current output.
No, filing volume has declined sharply since a 2017 peak of 260 annual filings, falling to 45 by the 2022 midpoint and to near-zero toward the end of the tracked window. Some of that recent drop is a publication-lag artefact, since patent applications typically take about 18 months to publish after filing, so the very last year or two will always look thinner than it eventually turns out to be. Even accounting for that lag, the multi-year decline from the 2017 peak indicates a maturing rather than expanding field.
The IPC composition shows sterilising and disinfecting technology (A61L) and implants and prostheses (A61F) as the two largest classes, each covering roughly half the corpus, ahead of medicinal preparations (A61K) and heterocyclic drug compounds (C07D). This ordering indicates that the coating process and physical stent structure carry more claim density than the drug payload chemistry itself. A company entering this space should expect denser prior art around coating and sterilisation methods than around the therapeutic compound being delivered.
Filing density is comparatively thinner in areas like bioresorbable polymer scaffolds, non-polymer drug-carrier coatings, and endothelial-layer restoration methods, relative to the heavily claimed core coating and framework categories. That does not mean these areas are unclaimed, but the concentration is lower than in A61L and A61F broadly. A focused prior-art search within these narrower branches, rather than the field as a whole, is the more productive starting point for a first claim.
US20190365959A1, filed by Sino Medical Sciences Technology, claims a drug-eluting stent with a specifically uneven-thickness drug-containing layer designed to dissolve between 45 and 60 days post-implantation, along with methods for verifying long-term coating stability and predicting patient safety outcomes. It sits within the broader coating and drug-release claim space that A61L and A61F filings dominate. Whether it blocks a new design depends on whether that design uses a comparably tuned variable-thickness coating and matching dissolution window; designs using uniform-thickness coatings or different release timeframes fall outside its most specific claims.
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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.