This dataset identifies 3,322 published patent families matching meniscus repair, cartilage repair and meniscal implant search terms between 2015 and mid-2026. That figure counts families rather than raw documents, which avoids inflating the count through continuations or multi-jurisdiction filings of the same invention. It covers both mechanical fixation devices and biologic scaffold or cell-therapy approaches, since the search terms span both.

The leading assignee in the ranking holds 168 records, with the top 5 assignees combined holding 18.8% of all 3,322 records in scope and the top 10 combined reaching 29.7%. That leaves the majority of records spread across a long tail of the remaining ranked companies, so the field is not dominated by one or two filers in the way some device categories are. The full ranking includes both large diversified medical companies and specialist orthopaedic and biotech filers.

Filings peaked at 226 in 2019 and fell over the following years, with the last complete comparison — 2021 to 2024 — showing a 58% drop from 106 to 45 filings. The near-zero figures for 2025 and 2026 are not evidence of a stopped field; publication lags actual filing by roughly 18 months, so recent years are still filling in. Judge momentum on the 2019-to-2024 window, not on the most recent two years shown in any chart.

US6371958B1, assigned to Ethicon, Inc. and granted in 2002, claims a scaffold fixation device for fastening an articular cartilage scaffold to underlying bone with controlled loading of the scaffold. It sits at the mechanical-fixation end of the field rather than the biologic-payload end, so it primarily constrains hardware-focused fixation designs rather than cell-therapy or hydrogel-carrier approaches. Anyone designing a fixation mechanism should review its specific claim language directly rather than assume the patent is a general blocker across the whole meniscus and cartilage repair space.

The clearest gaps sit in sub-areas that show lower claim density than the core A61K and A61L classes that dominate the dataset — for example scaffold vascularisation detail, suture-tensioning mechanisms specific to all-inside repair devices, and combined single-claim devices that pair fixation hardware with a biologic payload. These are starting points for a novelty search, not a clearance opinion, since claim density is a proxy for occupied space rather than a guarantee of freedom to operate. Checking recent filing activity in each branch before committing R&D time is still necessary.