Hydrogel Sealants for Surgery Patents: Leaders & White Space 2026
Hydrogel Sealant Patents for Surgery: Who Holds the Claims
30.4% of all 3,058 records sit with the five leading assignees, a level of concentration that makes freedom-to-operate checks against those portfolios a first step, not an afterthought. Annual publications climbed from 154 in 2017 to a peak of 251 in 2022, then declined to 75 by 2024 — a 66% drop across that three-year span. 2025 and 2026 figures are still filling in given the roughly 18-month lag between filing and publication, so the apparent tail should not be read as the field going quiet.
- 1INCEPT LLC8.5%
- 2CILAG GMBH INTERNATIONAL7.8%
- 3ETHICON INC6.4%
- 4ANGIOTECH INT AG (CH)4.7%
- 5RGT UNIV OF CALIFORNIA3.0%
See the full hydrogel sealants for surgery 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 about hydrogel sealant patents
Who holds the most patents on hydrogel surgical sealants?
The assignee ranking in this dataset is led by a single company holding 261 of the 3,058 records in scope, well ahead of the fifth-place holder at 91. The top five assignees combined hold 30.4% of all records, and the top ten hold 42.2%, which means the field has a clear leader plus a long tail of smaller filers. Anyone assessing competitive position should treat the leader’s portfolio as the primary freedom-to-operate check and the remaining ranked companies as secondary but still relevant.
Is hydrogel sealant patent activity growing or slowing?
Filings rose from 154 in 2017 to a peak of 251 in 2022, then fell to 75 by 2024, a 66% decline over that three-year span. That 2021-2024 window is the most recent period the data can treat as complete, because publication typically lags filing by about 18 months. Figures for 2025 and 2026 are still filling in, so the apparent falloff in the most recent one or two years should not yet be read as the technology losing momentum.
What technical claims dominate hydrogel sealant patents?
Sterilising and disinfecting claims under A61L appear on 47.1% of the 3,058 records, and medicinal-preparation claims under A61K appear on 45.8%, meaning nearly half the field claims both functions together in the same filing. Surgical and diagnostic device claims (A61B) cover 22.2% of records, while the underlying polymer chemistry classes, C08L and C08G, sit lower at 7.9% and 6.8%. That gap suggests most applicants are protecting the medical-use application of the hydrogel rather than the base polymer chemistry itself.
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 Hydrogel Sealants for Surgery 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.