Stent Retriever Thrombectomy Patents: Who Leads, Trends 2026
- 47.8% of all filings sit with five assignees. 1,038 of 2,170 records in scope belong to the top five filers, leaving a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants below tenth place at 34 records.
- Filings fell 63% from the 2021 peak. The field peaked at 252 records in 2021 and had dropped to 94 by 2024, the last year that can be treated as complete given an 18-month publication lag.
- A61B dominates, but structural classes are thin. 80.9% of records touch diagnosis-and-surgery claims (A61B), while braiding/lace construction (D04C) and healthcare informatics (G16H) each sit under 2%.
Filing growth compares 2021 (252 records) with 2024 (94) — 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 2,170 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the stent retriever thrombectomy patent record actually shows
Stent retriever and mechanical thrombectomy patents cluster around device geometry, clot-capture mechanics and delivery systems for acute ischemic stroke. The search set spans 2,170 records filed or published between 2015 and mid-2026, built from claims and descriptions referencing clot integration, first pass effect, retrieval force, vessel wall injury, radial force and recanalization rate — the technical vocabulary that separates this niche from general endovascular devices. Patent families, not raw document counts, are the fairer unit here, since continuation practice and multi-jurisdiction filing can inflate a single invention into several published documents.
Filing activity rose through the late 2010s, peaked in 2021, and has declined since — a pattern consistent with a technology area where core mechanical approaches were staked out early and later filings increasingly refine rather than redefine the base geometry. Receiving-office data shows the United States as the dominant venue, with Europe, the WIPO PCT route and Germany forming a secondary tier — a filing footprint typical of a device category cleared through both FDA and CE pathways.
Let an AI agent run this analysis on your own technology
Pick a task. Every answer cites the patents behind it.
Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 2,170-record set: how filing volume moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density.
Filing trend, 2017–2026
Filings ran from 121 in 2017 to a peak of 252 in 2021, then declined to 94 by 2024 — a 63% drop over that three-year span. 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete due to the roughly 18-month lag between filing and publication, so the apparent tail-off should not be read as the field cooling.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
A61B (diagnosis and surgery) touches 80.9% of the 2,170 records, with A61F (implants and prostheses) and A61M (devices for body fluids) each present in roughly a third of records. Sterilising methods, welding/brazing construction, braiding, informatics and therapeutic-compound classes each sit under 3%, marking areas of comparatively light claim coverage. Records can carry more than one class, so these shares sum to well over 100%.
Shares are the percentage of the 2,170 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Stent Retriever Thrombectomy with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about stent retriever thrombectomy and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited prior art and a representative recent filing
US20240188972A1 — Expandable mouth aspirating clot retrieval catheter (Neuravi, 2024-06-13)
The filing describes an inner aspirating clot retrieval catheter with an expansile distal tip housed inside an outer catheter. The tip's strut framework carries a flexible, low-modulus cover and a low-friction elastomeric lip at the distal end, intended for atraumatic vessel contact while the tip expands radially from a collapsed delivery configuration into a large-mouth capture geometry.Filed by Neuravi Limited, published mid-2024 — recent enough that its examination and citation history are still developing.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6146396A | Declotting method and apparatus | 570 |
| 2 | US20130345739A1 | Clot retrieval device for removing occlusive clot from a blood vessel | 521 |
| 3 | US20130281788A1 | Methods and systems for treatment of acute ischemic stroke | 494 |
| 4 | US8066757B2 | Blood flow restoration and thrombus management methods | 458 |
| 5 | US20110160763A1 | Blood flow restoration and thrombus management methods | 455 |
| 6 | US8088140B2 | Blood flow restorative and embolus removal methods | 446 |
| 7 | US8795305B2 | Retrieval systems and methods for use thereof | 429 |
| 8 | US20170105743A1 | Devices and methods for removal of acute blockages from blood vessels | 426 |
| 9 | US20130035628A1 | Methods and systems for treatment of acute ischemic stroke | 406 |
| 10 | US20150173782A1 | Methods and Systems for Treatment of Acute Ischemic Stroke | 376 |
Citation counts favour older filings by construction — a highly cited 1990s or 2000s patent signals foundational influence, not that its claims remain the most commercially relevant today.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Put your own technology through the same analysis
Eureka on the web
When you want the answer in the next five minutes.
The agent works the prompt against patents and technical literature, citing every source.
Run your analysis now →MCP server & REST API
When it has to run inside your own pipeline.
Patent search, landscape analysis and assignee resolution as MCP tools. Drop them into any agent framework, or call REST directly.
Browse MCP servers →What the filing pattern implies for strategy
Three read-throughs from the concentration, momentum and citation data — useful for deciding where a freedom-to-operate search needs to go deep versus where it can move fast.
The top of the field is dense, the rest is a long tail
With the leader alone holding 562 records and the tenth-ranked assignee down to 34, the gap between the top few filers and everyone else is steep. A new entrant's freedom-to-operate work concentrates disproportionately on a handful of portfolios rather than spreading evenly across the ranked 100.
Post-peak decline reflects settled base geometry, not shrinking interest
Volume fell from 252 records in 2021 to 94 in 2024. That trajectory is consistent with an area where the foundational retriever and aspiration mechanics are already claimed, and later work shifts toward incremental refinement — tip geometry, cover materials, delivery mechanics — rather than new base architectures.
Foundational clot-retrieval and declotting patents still anchor prior art searches
The most-cited records date to earlier clot retrieval and declotting mechanics and blood-flow restoration methods. Their citation counts reflect years of accumulated reference, not current commercial weight — newer filings on expansile tips and aspiration geometry are still building citation history.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to stent retriever thrombectomy, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the claim space, and where it opens up
The ranked assignee list runs 100 deep, but the practical competitive set is much smaller: five companies hold nearly half the record base, and the co-filing pattern between named inventors and a small number of corporate assignees points to how that concentration built up.
A single filer holds more than a quarter of the record base alone
The leading assignee's 562 records outweigh the combined total of the fifth through tenth-ranked filers. That scale typically means dense coverage across core retriever geometry, delivery catheter design and aspiration mechanics, making early-stage design-around work a priority for anyone entering with a similar mechanical approach.
A meaningful gap separates the leader from the rest of the top five
Fifth place holds 82 records against the leader's 562 — a roughly seven-fold gap. The top-five group as a whole accounts for 1,038 records, or 47.8% of all 2,170 in scope, but that share is unevenly distributed rather than five comparable competitors.
Named inventors recur alongside one corporate assignee
The strongest co-assignee pairs link a single corporate entity with the same individual inventors across multiple filings, a pattern consistent with an in-house engineering team building a portfolio incrementally rather than licensing in outside technology.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Route 92 Medical Inc | 3 | -67% |
| Anaconda Biomed SL | 1 | -75% |
| Neuravi Limited | 0 | -100% |
| Covidien LP | 0 | -100% |
| Insera Therapeutics Inc | 0 | -100% |
| Legacy Investments LLC | 0 | — |
| MINDFRAME INC | 0 | — |
| Concentric Medical Inc | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The concentration and composition data point to specific next moves depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, portfolio strategy or identifying acquisition targets.
Run a claim-level clearance on the top five portfolios
With 47.8% of records held by five assignees, a design-around search should start there before spreading across the full ranked list of 100.
Explore assignee portfolios in EurekaMap the under-claimed IPC branches against your own design
Braiding construction, welding/joint methods and informatics classes sit under 3% of records each — check whether your approach falls into one of these lighter-coverage areas.
Run an IPC gap analysis in EurekaTrack post-2024 filings as they publish
2025-2026 data is still incomplete due to publication lag; revisit filing trend and leader momentum once those years fill in.
Set up filing alerts in EurekaCommon questions on stent retriever thrombectomy patents
The dataset ranks 100 assignees by record count, and the field is heavily concentrated at the top: the leading assignee alone holds 562 of the 2,170 records in scope, and the top five combined account for 47.8% of all records. By the tenth position, individual counts have fallen to 34 records, meaning the bulk of the ranked list is a long tail of smaller filers. Anyone assessing competitive risk should focus freedom-to-operate work on the leading handful of portfolios first, since they cover a disproportionate share of the claim space.
Filing volume peaked in 2021 at 252 records and had fallen to 94 by 2024, a 63% decline over that three-year span. That should not be read as declining interest in the technology itself; publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so the most recent one to two years in any dataset are always undercounted. The decline from a clear 2021 peak, however, is a real signal that the highest-volume filing period for foundational mechanical approaches has likely passed.
The dominant IPC subclass is A61B, covering diagnosis and surgery methods, present in 80.9% of the 2,170 records in scope. A61F (implants and prostheses) and A61M (devices for handling body fluids) each appear in roughly a third of records, reflecting the dual nature of these devices as both surgical instruments and implantable-adjacent hardware. Smaller classes — sterilisation, welding/brazing, braiding, healthcare informatics and therapeutic compounds — each cover under 3% of records and represent comparatively lighter claim density.
The composition data shows several IPC subclasses well below the dominant surgical classes: braiding and lace construction methods (D04C) at 1.8% of records, welding/soldering/brazing techniques (B23K) at 2.4%, and healthcare informatics tied to recanalization tracking (G16H) at 1.8%. These lower-density branches suggest structural manufacturing methods and digital procedure-tracking tools are less claimed than the core device geometry itself, making them worth a closer novelty search before assuming the space is occupied.
The most-cited record in this corpus is a declotting method and apparatus patent cited 570 times, followed closely by clot retrieval device and acute ischemic stroke treatment filings with citation counts above 450. These older patents anchor much of the foundational prior art for clot capture and blood-flow restoration mechanics. High citation counts reflect years of accumulated reference within a searched corpus rather than current commercial relevance, so recent filings on aspiration geometry or expansile tips will naturally show far fewer citations despite being technically current.
Research Stent Retriever Thrombectomy in depth with Eureka
Go past this page: query the whole stent retriever thrombectomy corpus yourself, in your own scope.
Every answer comes back with patent numbers you can open.
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.