Leadless Pacemaker Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- 85.4% of all 896 records sit with the top five assignees combined — this field is claimed, not fragmented.
- Filings peaked in 2019 at 106 and 2021-2024 shows an 11% decline, though 2025-2026 figures are still filling in due to publication lag.
- A61N electrotherapy claims cover 87.5% of records while wireless communication and power-management classes each sit under 4%, marking the open ground.
Filing growth compares 2021 (80 records) with 2024 (71) — 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 896 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the Leadless Pacemaker Patent Record Shows
Leadless pacemaker systems replace the lead-and-can architecture with a self-contained biostimulator implanted directly in the heart chamber, which shifts the hard engineering problems to fixation, delivery and eventual retrieval. The patent record in scope, 896 published records from 2015 to the 2026 cut-off, tracks that shift closely: the dominant IPC classes are electrotherapy devices and surgical/diagnostic apparatus, not the wireless or power-systems classes that a purely miniaturisation-driven narrative might predict. Delivery catheters and fixation tines are the most litigated-adjacent, most cited subject matter in this dataset.
Filing activity built steadily from 2017, peaked in 2019, and has since eased — a pattern consistent with a technology that moved from open invention to defending an established architecture. The concentration of filings among a handful of assignees suggests most of the foundational claim space around fixation, docking and delivery is already occupied, which changes where a new entrant should look for room to build.
Filing Trend and Technology Mix
Two views of the same 896-record dataset: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claims.
Filing Trend, 2017-2026
Filings rose from 69 in 2017 to a peak of 106 in 2019. The 2021-2024 span, the most recent period treatable as complete once publication lag is accounted for, shows a decline from 80 to 71 filings, an 11% drop. Years after 2024 are still filling in and should not be read as a continued fall.
Technology Composition by IPC Subclass
A61N (electrotherapy and radiation therapy) appears in 87.5% of the 896 records, confirming that most claims are anchored in the core stimulation device rather than peripheral systems. A61B (diagnosis and surgery) at 38.7% and A61M (devices for body fluids) at 20.8% cover delivery and implantation tooling. Informatics, wireless and power-related classes each sit under 4%, and records can carry more than one class, so these shares sum to more than 100%.
Shares are the percentage of the 896 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Leadless Pacemaker Systems with Eureka
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Try EurekaMost-Cited Records and a Representative Filing
US10653859B2 — Delivery Catheter Systems and Methods
Discloses a delivery catheter for implanting a leadless biostimulator, using a shaft and tubular body with a lumen and an atraumatic end. The atraumatic end has a braided, woven or mesh construction that lets it change diameter, so that displacing the tubular body relative to the shaft causes the leadless biostimulator to be received within the atraumatic end for controlled deployment.Assigned to Pacesetter, Inc. and published 2020-05-19.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20120172892A1 | Implantable medical device fixation | 555 |
| 2 | US20120172690A1 | Implantable medical device fixation | 518 |
| 3 | US20060106442A1 | Devices and methods for treating cardiac pathologies | 314 |
| 4 | US20120165827A1 | Pacemaker Retrieval Systems and Methods | 300 |
| 5 | US20120095539A1 | Delivery Catheter Systems and Methods | 290 |
| 6 | US20110270340A1 | Two-Stage Delivery Systems and Methods for Fixing a Leadless Implant to Tissue | 285 |
| 7 | US20110270339A1 | Two-Stage Delivery Systems and Methods for Fixing a Leadless Implant to Tissue | 273 |
| 8 | US9717421B2 | Implantable medical device delivery catheter with tether | 265 |
| 9 | US20130079861A1 | Imd stability monitor | 263 |
| 10 | US20120172891A1 | Implantable medical device fixation testing | 260 |
Citation counts favour older filings within the searched corpus and should be read as a signal of influence, not of current commercial relevance.
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The dataset points to a field where the core architecture is settled and the remaining claim space is narrower than the headline numbers suggest.
Foundational claim space is largely occupied
The leader alone accounts for 331 of the 896 records in scope. Combined with the next four assignees, the top five hold 85.4% of all records, leaving a genuinely long tail among the remaining ranked companies.
Filing activity has eased from its 2019 peak
Filings peaked at 106 in 2019 and the last fully comparable window, 2021 to 2024, shows a decline from 80 to 71 filings. Recent-year momentum by assignee also skews negative across the leading filers, though 2025-2026 figures will revise upward as publication catches up.
Claims cluster on the device, not the network
Electrotherapy and surgical/diagnostic classes dominate the record, while wireless communication (2.5%), power supply (2.9%) and magnetics (1.7%) each cover a small fraction of the 896 records. That gap is where device-adjacent system claims remain comparatively open.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to leadless pacemaker systems, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who Is Filing, and Where the Openings Sit
A small group of device makers holds most of the record; the remaining ranked companies each contribute a handful of filings, mostly in delivery and fixation hardware rather than the communication or power layer.
One assignee sets the pace
The top-ranked assignee's filing count is more than four times that of the fifth-placed company, which sat at 22. That gap defines the shape of this field far more than the length of the ranked list does.
Leading filers are pulling back, not just plateauing
Recent-year momentum across the top filers is uniformly negative, with declines ranging from double digits to a full stop in new filings. This reads as consolidation around existing claims rather than a retreat from the space.
Inventor pairs cluster tightly
The strongest co-filing relationships involve a small set of named inventors filing together repeatedly, suggesting concentrated internal teams rather than broad cross-company collaboration.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| PACESETTER INC | 2 | -90% |
| Medtronic, Inc. | 1 | -92% |
| Biotronik SE & Co. KG | 1 | -75% |
| Cardiac Pacemakers, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Nanostim, Inc. | 0 | — |
| EBR SYSTEMS INC | 0 | -100% |
| Broncus Medical, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Children's National Medical Center | 0 | — |
Where to Take This Analysis
The dataset points to specific next questions depending on whether you are clearing a design, scouting acquisition targets, or deciding where to file.
Map claims against a specific delivery design
Run a freedom-to-operate style comparison of a candidate delivery catheter or fixation tine design against the highest-cited records identified here.
Explore in EurekaTrack the leading filer's recent activity
Momentum has turned negative across the top assignees; watching what they file next indicates whether the core architecture is still being defended or extended.
Explore in EurekaScope the under-claimed branches
Wireless telemetry, power management and retrieval tooling all sit under 4% of records — worth a deeper look before committing R&D budget to the core stimulation device.
Explore in EurekaCommon Questions on Leadless Pacemaker Patents
One assignee holds 331 of the 896 records in scope, more than four times the fifth-ranked company's 22 filings. The top five assignees combined account for 85.4% of all records, and the top ten reach 93.0%. This means the field is heavily concentrated at the top, with a long tail of companies each holding a small number of filings among the 71 ranked assignees.
Filing activity peaked in 2019 at 106 records and the most recent fully comparable window, 2021 to 2024, shows an 11% decline from 80 to 71 filings. Figures for 2025 and 2026 are still incomplete because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so it is too early to call the trend a sustained slowdown. What is clear is that growth has not continued at its 2019 pace.
The overwhelming majority, 87.5% of the 896 records, carry an A61N electrotherapy classification, reflecting claims on the core stimulation device itself. Diagnosis and surgery claims (A61B, 38.7%) and body-fluid device claims (A61M, 20.8%) cover implantation and delivery tooling. Wireless communication, power supply and informatics classes each appear in under 4% of records, which is comparatively thin coverage for functions that matter to long-term device performance.
US10653859B2, assigned to Pacesetter, Inc. and published in 2020, claims a delivery catheter with a shaft and tubular body whose atraumatic end uses a braided, woven or mesh construction to change diameter during deployment of a leadless biostimulator. Any delivery system relying on that specific diameter-changing mesh mechanism to receive and release the implant sits close to this claim. Designs using a different deployment mechanism, such as a rigid sheath or a different release geometry, have more room to operate, but a claim chart against the specific limitations is the only reliable way to confirm clearance.
The clearest gaps sit in wireless telemetry between the implant and external programmer, battery longevity and power-management circuitry, and device retrieval or snare-based extraction tooling, each represented in under 4% of the 896 records despite their importance to long-term device performance. Docking-feature standardisation and informatics for tracking implant duration are similarly thin. These branches sit adjacent to a densely claimed core architecture, so a new filing there is less likely to collide with the foundational fixation and delivery patents that dominate the record.
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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.