Endoscopic Suturing and Closure Patents: Leaders & White Space 2026
- 129 of 133 records (97.0%) sit in A61B diagnosis-and-surgery classes, while only 6 records (4.5%) touch A61L sterilising claims — closure mechanics dominate, infection-control aspects are barely claimed.
- The leading assignee holds 26 records against a fifth-place count of 17 and a tenth-place count of 6, a steep drop that leaves a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants across 52 ranked companies.
- Filing peaked at 11 records in 2024, with the most recent year necessarily undercounted because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months.
What this landscape covers
This dataset tracks 133 published records matching endoscopic suturing, endoscopic closure and clip-closure terminology combined with procedural qualifiers such as through-the-scope delivery, defect size and closure durability. The scope runs from 2015 through the 2026-07-31 data cut-off, giving a decade-plus view of how closure devices for gastrointestinal and thoracoscopic access have been claimed.
Coverage concentrates in surgical instrument claims (A61B) with a substantial secondary presence in implant and prosthesis claims (A61F), reflecting that many closure devices are claimed alongside the implantable partitions or clips they deploy. Receiving-office data shows the United States and the European Patent Office as the two largest filing venues, with WIPO PCT filings close behind, indicating that most serious filers are pursuing multi-jurisdiction protection rather than staying domestic.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 133-record dataset: filing activity over time, and where those records sit across IPC subclasses.
Filing trend, 2017–2026
Filings rose unevenly from 2 records in 2017 to a peak of 11 in 2024. The 2026 count is partial by definition — publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the last one to two years of any trend line understate actual filing activity.
IPC subclass composition
A61B (diagnosis and surgery) covers 97.0% of the 133 records, confirming that closure mechanics are the dominant claim target. A61F (implants and prostheses) appears in 33.8% of records, and A61M (devices for body fluids) in 15.0%. Sterilising claims under A61L cover only 4.5% of records, and electrotherapy (A61N) and digital processing (G06F) each appear in a single-digit handful of records — these are the thinnest-claimed adjacent branches in the dataset.
Shares are the percentage of the 133 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Endoscopic Suturing and Closure with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about endoscopic suturing and closure and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative filing and most-cited prior art
Method and Device for Closure of Intraluminal Perforations
A closure device having evertable arms for capturing and everting tissue and method for its use with an invasive scope, such as an endoscope, for full-thickness closure of perforations and leaks in the walls of an intraluminal bodily space.Filed by Johns Hopkins University, published 2013-08-29 as US20130225900A1.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20050177181A1 | Devices and methods for treating morbid obesity | 1,907 |
| 2 | US20090149871A9 | Devices and methods for treating morbid obesity | 1,666 |
| 3 | US8070743B2 | Devices and methods for attaching an endolumenal gastrointestinal implant | 1,477 |
| 4 | US5855614A | Method and apparatus for thoracoscopic intracardiac procedures | 1,294 |
| 5 | US8252009B2 | Devices and methods for placement of partitions within a hollow body organ | 1,123 |
| 6 | US20060020247A1 | Devices and methods for attaching an endolumenal gastrointestinal implant | 899 |
| 7 | US8449560B2 | Devices and methods for placement of partitions within a hollow body organ | 888 |
| 8 | US20060151568A1 | Devices and methods for placement of partitions within a hollow body organ | 368 |
| 9 | US20060009789A1 | Tissue capturing devices | 361 |
| 10 | US6666861B1 | Atrial appendage remodeling device and method | 281 |
Citation counts favour older records simply by virtue of being searchable longer; treat them as a signal of influence on the field, not of current commercial importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three findings that shape where new closure-device claims are likely to survive prosecution and where they will collide with dense prior art.
Closure mechanics are the occupied ground
Nearly every record in scope touches A61B surgical-instrument claims, meaning basic closure mechanisms — evertable arms, clip deployment, through-the-scope delivery — are heavily claimed. New filings here need a genuinely distinguishing mechanical feature to clear prior art.
Sterilising and disinfecting claims are thin
Only 6 of 133 records carry A61L sterilising or disinfecting claims. For a device category that operates inside the GI tract, this is a strikingly under-claimed adjacency relative to the mechanical closure art around it.
A steep drop-off after the leader
The leading assignee's 26 records compare to 17 at fifth place and just 6 at tenth, across 52 ranked companies. That gradient points to one or two entrenched filers backed by a long tail of academic and single-filing entrants rather than a broad competitive middle.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to endoscopic suturing and closure, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and how they cluster
Filing activity separates into an established medical-device leader, a set of teaching hospitals and university labs that co-file with each other, and a long tail of single-record entrants.
An entrenched device maker
The top-ranked assignee holds 26 of the 133 records in scope, well ahead of the rest of the field — consistent with a company that has built out closure-device claims across multiple device generations.
Teaching-hospital and university co-filing
MIT, Brigham & Women's, Harvard and a children's hospital corporation appear together in the strongest co-assignee pairs, each pair sharing 17 records — a pattern typical of device work that moves from academic labs into affiliated hospital systems before licensing out.
A wide field of small filers
The ranking returns 52 companies, with the count falling from 26 at the top to single digits by tenth place. Most of these are one- or few-record filers, suggesting the space remains open to new entrants who can clear the mechanical core claims.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc. | 0 | — |
| C.R. Bard, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 0 | — |
| The Brigham and Women's Hospital, Inc. | 0 | — |
| President and Fellows of Harvard College | 0 | — |
| Children's Medical Center Corporation | 0 | — |
| VALENTX | 0 | — |
| SATIETY INC | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to specific next steps for teams deciding where to file or where to watch.
Map the sterilisation gap in detail
With only 4.5% of records touching A61L, a closer read of those six records would show whether the gap is genuinely open or simply unclaimed because it is hard to claim.
Explore in EurekaTrack the academic co-filing cluster
The MIT–Harvard–hospital co-assignee pairs suggest active licensing relationships; watching their filing cadence flags where licensed technology may next reach a commercial partner.
Explore in EurekaRe-run the trend once 2025–2026 fully publish
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the true 2025 and 2026 filing counts will only be visible in later data cuts — treat the current peak year as provisional.
Explore in EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
One assignee leads the ranked field with 26 records, well ahead of fifth place at 17 and tenth place at 6 across 52 ranked companies. This gradient indicates a single entrenched medical-device filer rather than a crowded competitive middle. Newer entrants would be filing against that leader's accumulated claim set in the core closure-mechanism art, so freedom-to-operate work should start there rather than with the long tail of smaller filers.
A61B, the diagnosis-and-surgery subclass, covers 97.0% of the 133 records in scope, making basic closure mechanics — clip deployment, evertable-arm designs, through-the-scope delivery — the most densely claimed territory. A61F implant and prosthesis claims appear in 33.8% of records, often layered onto the same devices. Sterilising and disinfecting claims under A61L, by contrast, appear in only 4.5% of records, marking a comparatively open adjacency.
Filing activity rose from 2 records in 2017 to a peak of 11 in 2024, but a formal growth rate is not computable from this dataset because fewer than four complete years remain once the roughly 18-month publication lag is accounted for. The 2026 count in particular should be read as understated rather than as an actual decline. A reliable trend read will need at least one more annual data cut.
US20130225900A1, filed by Johns Hopkins University, claims a closure device with evertable arms that capture and evert tissue for full-thickness closure of perforations and leaks via an endoscope. Its scope centres on the tissue-eversion mechanism itself rather than on delivery hardware generically, so designs using different capture geometries — such as suction-based or magnet-assisted apposition — sit outside its core claim language. Anyone designing a through-the-scope closure device should still map their tissue-engagement mechanism against this claim set specifically, since eversion-style capture is the feature most likely to read on it.
The clearest under-claimed branches sit adjacent to the dense A61B mechanical core: sterile-barrier integration for through-the-scope clips, defect-size sensing at the point of closure, and post-procedure closure-durability monitoring all show minimal claim density in this dataset. A61L sterilising claims cover only 4.5% of the 133 records, and digital-processing overlap (G06F) appears in just 2 records. These branches are open partly because they require pairing mechanical claims with sensing or materials expertise that most filers in this dataset have not combined.
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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.