Neuromodulation Device Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- Filing peaked in 2020 at 36 families and has declined every year since, with the most recent full year showing effectively no new activity from the assignees that once led the field.
- A61N electrotherapy claims dominate the corpus at 130 of 133 families, while adjacent classes like G16H healthcare informatics and G16B/G06F software integration sit in single digits — a sign that closed-loop and data-layer claims are thin.
- The most-cited prior art is a decade or more old vagus-nerve stimulation patents from the 2000s still anchor citation counts, which says more about search-corpus age than about where the technology is heading now.
What this landscape covers
This dataset tracks 133 patent families filed against implantable stimulators, neural stimulation electrodes and related neuromodulation hardware, filtered to documents that specifically address charge injection limits, lead migration, battery longevity, closed-loop stimulation or MRI compatibility — the five engineering constraints that separate a lab prototype from an implantable product. Coverage runs from 2015 through the 2026 data cut-off, though publication lag of roughly eighteen months means the final year or two is always undercounted at the point of any snapshot.
The IPC spread is narrow: almost every family sits in A61N (electrotherapy and radiation therapy), with a secondary cluster in A61B (diagnosis and surgery) covering electrode placement and sensing. That concentration tells a filer where the crowded ground is before they draft a single claim.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 133 families: how filing volume moved year over year, and how those filings distribute across IPC subclasses.
A filing curve that peaked and rolled over
Annual filings rose from 5 in 2017 to a peak of 36 in 2020, sat at 9 by the 2022 midpoint, and show no filings in the final tracked year — consistent with either a genuine slowdown or, more likely, publication lag masking work still in the pipeline.
Claim density sits almost entirely in electrotherapy
A61N accounts for 130 of 133 families; A61B (diagnosis and surgery, 40 families) and A61L (sterilising and disinfecting, 9) are the only other subclasses with meaningful presence. Everything else — body-fluid devices, healthcare informatics, digital data processing, welding/brazing for hermetic seals, and information storage — appears in single digits, marking the informatics and software-integration layer as comparatively open.
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 Neuromodulation and Implantable Stimulation Devices with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about neuromodulation and implantable stimulation devices and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe prior art anchoring this space
US20210170176A1 — Implantable stimulator with an electrode array and conformable substrate
Filed to address a specific, named failure mode: cylindrical, thick craniofacial leads that erode through skin or migrate off-target. The claimed device replaces the rigid lead body with a conformable substrate carrying the electrode array and interconnections, capped at 0.5 millimetres of thickness, paired with a pulse generator.Assignee: Salvia Bioelectronics B.V. · Published 2021-06-10
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20050049655A1 | System and method for providing electrical pulses to the vagus nerve(s) to provide therapy for obesity, eatin… | 471 |
| 2 | US6941171B2 | Implantable stimulator methods for treatment of incontinence and pain | 467 |
| 3 | US20060122675A1 | Stimulator for auricular branch of vagus nerve | 385 |
| 4 | US20020055761A1 | Implantable stimulator systems and methods for treatment of incontinence and pain | 357 |
| 5 | US7191012B2 | Method and system for providing pulsed electrical stimulation to a craniel nerve of a patient to provide ther… | 189 |
| 6 | US20050143786A1 | Method and system for providing pulsed electrical stimulation to a craniel nerve of a patient to provide ther… | 168 |
| 7 | US20070049988A1 | Optimal electrode contact polarity configurations for implantable stimulation systems | 143 |
| 8 | US7263405B2 | System and method for providing electrical pulses to the vagus nerve(s) to provide therapy for obesity, eatin… | 138 |
| 9 | US20150066108A1 | Systems and method of adjusting the compliance voltage in a neuromodulation device | 124 |
| 10 | US20080288016A1 | Systems and methods for stimulating neural targets | 119 |
Citation counts favour older filings by construction — treat this table as a map of influential prior art, not of current competitive activity.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three patterns in the data that matter more than the raw counts.
The curve rolled over after 2020
Filings climbed steadily from 5 in 2017 to 36 in 2020, then fell back toward single digits by 2022 and show none in the most recent full year. Publication lag explains part of the drop, but the multi-year decline before that lag window started is a real signal of reduced filing appetite among the historically active assignees.
Electrotherapy claims dominate the corpus
Almost every family in this dataset sits inside A61N, the electrotherapy and radiation-therapy subclass. That leaves very little claim space untouched in the core stimulator mechanism, and pushes differentiation toward adjacent classes — sensing (A61B), sterilisation and biocompatible coatings (A61L), and informatics (G16H) — where filing counts are far thinner.
The most influential prior art predates this decade
The five most-cited records in the corpus are vagus-nerve and incontinence stimulator patents originally published in the 2000s. Their citation counts (in the hundreds) reflect a longer window to accumulate citations, not that vagus-nerve stimulation is still the frontier — newer branches simply have not had time to catch up on citation count.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to neuromodulation and implantable stimulation devices, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is still active, and who has stopped
Recent-year momentum tells a different story from cumulative filing counts: the assignees with the largest historical portfolios in this dataset show zero filings in the latest tracked year, which is either a real pullback or a filing pipeline still working through publication lag.
Established players show no latest-year filings
Boston Scientific Neuromodulation, Salvia Bioelectronics, Saluda Medical, Cardiac Pacemakers Inc., Greatbatch and named inventor Imad Libbus all register zero filings in the latest tracked year in this dataset. For a field with a 2020 peak, that flat line across multiple historically active assignees is the strongest single signal here.
Co-filing is limited and concentrated
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear across the corpus, and the strongest links run through Cardiac Pacemakers Inc. paired with named inventor Imad Libbus, and separately with Badri Amurthur. Most families in this dataset are filed by a single assignee working alone, rather than through joint ventures or cross-licensing arrangements.
Government and university filers sit alongside device makers
The assignee list includes the University of California Board of Regents and a US government health agency alongside commercial device manufacturers, which is typical for a field where early-stage electrode and biocompatibility research is publicly funded before licensing to industry.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Boston Scientific Neuromodulation Corporation | 0 | -100% |
| Salvia Bioelectronics B.V. | 0 | — |
| Saluda Medical Pty Ltd | 0 | — |
| Cardiac Pacemakers, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Greatbatch Ltd. | 0 | — |
| LIBBUS IMAD | 0 | — |
| Advanced Bionics Corporation | 0 | — |
| The United States of America, as represented by the Secretary of Health and Human Services | 0 | — |
Where to take this
The filing curve and the claim concentration both point to the same conclusion: the core stimulator mechanism is well covered, and the open ground is at the edges.
Check freedom-to-operate before drafting
With 130 of 133 families sitting in A61N, a new stimulator claim needs a careful prior-art search against the most-cited records before any drafting starts, particularly around lead geometry and charge injection limits.
Run a claim search in EurekaWatch for pipeline filings behind the publication lag
The apparent drop to zero in the latest year is partly a data artefact — filings made in the last 18 months are not yet published. Re-check assignee activity in this space in six to twelve months before concluding the field has gone quiet.
Set a monitoring alert in EurekaExplore the informatics and sensing adjacency
G16H, G06F and closed-loop sensing claims are a small fraction of this corpus. That is where a differentiated filing is more likely to clear prior art than inside the crowded core electrotherapy claims.
Map the white space in EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
In this dataset, cumulative filing volume is concentrated among a small group of device makers and named inventors, including Cardiac Pacemakers Inc. and Boston Scientific Neuromodulation, alongside academic and government filers such as the University of California Board of Regents. However, recent-year momentum tells a different story: several of the largest historical filers show zero filings in the latest tracked year, so cumulative rank and current activity are not the same thing. Anyone assessing competitive risk should look at both the ranking table and the momentum data before assuming a leader is still active.
The tracked filing trend shows growth from 5 families in 2017 to a peak of 36 in 2020, then a drop back toward single digits by 2022 with no filings recorded in the final tracked year. Part of that late-year drop is a publication-lag artefact, since patent applications typically publish around 18 months after filing, so the most recent one to two years are always undercounted in any live snapshot. The decline visible before that lag window kicks in, however, is a genuine signal worth investigating — it may reflect consolidation among the historically active assignees or a shift of R&D investment toward adjacent claim areas like closed-loop sensing.
Lead migration refers to an implanted electrode lead moving away from its intended target after implantation, which can reduce therapeutic effect or require revision surgery. It is one of the five engineering constraints this dataset specifically searches for, alongside charge injection limits, battery longevity, closed-loop stimulation and MRI compatibility, because these are the failure modes that separate a functioning implant from a laboratory prototype. The representative filing in this dataset, US20210170176A1 from Salvia Bioelectronics, addresses lead migration directly by replacing a rigid cylindrical lead with a thin, conformable substrate.
The IPC composition in this dataset shows claim density concentrated almost entirely in A61N (electrotherapy), with much thinner coverage in healthcare informatics (G16H), digital data processing (G06F) and information storage — all areas tied to closed-loop sensing and on-device data handling. These adjacent branches show single-digit family counts against a corpus of 133, which suggests the algorithmic and data-management layer around stimulation devices is comparatively under-claimed relative to the hardware itself. That said, thin filing counts can also mean the area is commercially unproven, not just legally open, so any filing decision there should pair the patent search with a market read.
Citation counts in this corpus are led by patents originally published in the 2000s covering vagus-nerve and incontinence stimulation, with counts in the hundreds — far ahead of anything filed in the last decade. That gap is largely a function of time: older patents have had more years to accumulate citations within a searched corpus, not necessarily more technical importance today. Citation counts are useful for building a freedom-to-operate list of foundational prior art, but they should not be read as a ranking of which technical approach is currently winning.
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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.