Surgical Suture Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- 77.5% of the field sits with five assignees. 265 of 342 records in scope belong to the top five filers, so most freedom-to-operate questions in this space come down to a small set of portfolios.
- Filing activity has cooled since a 2018 peak. The peak year so far is 2018 at 14 filings; the 2022 midpoint sits at 6, and the trend has not recovered — though the most recent year is always undercounted due to publication lag.
- A 1970s barbed-suture patent still anchors the citation graph. US3716058A, cited 933 times, and its 2003 successor US20030149447A1 shape how every later barbed-suture claim has to be drafted.
What the dataset covers
This landscape draws on 342 published records filed between 2015 and 2026 that combine surgical or absorbable suture terminology with claim language on knot security, absorption profile, antibacterial coating, barbed geometry or needle attachment, restricted to the core surgical and suturing IPC classes. The scope is deliberately narrow: it captures documents that make a technical claim about how a suture is structured or finished, not every device that happens to mention wound closure. Publication lag of roughly 18 months means the most recent filing year is understated relative to where it will eventually settle.
Coverage spans the leading receiving offices for this technology — the United States, the European Patent Office, Canada, WIPO's PCT route, Australia and China — giving a reasonably complete picture of where applicants have chosen to seek protection rather than just where they are headquartered.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 342 records: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses the claims actually sit in.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Filings rose to a peak of 14 in 2018, fell back toward the 2022 midpoint of 6, and have not regained that peak. The 2026 figure of 1 is a partial year and should be read alongside the publication-lag caveat rather than as a cliff.
IPC subclass composition
A61B (diagnosis and surgery) touches 90.1% of the 342 records, confirming that most filings are framed as surgical procedure or device claims rather than pure materials science. A61L (sterilising and disinfecting) reaches 27.8%, the clearest secondary cluster, while D02J, C08G, B29C, B65B, D01F and D06M each sit under 5% — real activity, but thin enough that a single well-drafted filing can still stand out.
Shares are the percentage of the 342 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Surgical Sutures and Wound Closure with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about surgical sutures and wound closure and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe prior art doing the most work
US3716058A — Barbed suture
A surgical suture useful in closing incisions, lacerations and wounds of human tissue comprising a relatively short section of rigid or flexible suture material with a return barb on both ends. The suture may be flat or arcuate and may contain single or multiple barbs on the ends. A notched and slotted needle is useful in inserting flexible sutures.Filed by Atlanta Research Institute and granted in 1973, this record predates the modern assignee leaders by decades yet remains the most-cited document in the corpus at 933 citations.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US3716058A | Barbed suture | 933 |
| 2 | US20030149447A1 | Barbed surgical suture | 505 |
| 3 | US4994074A | Copolymers of epsilon -caprolactone, glycolide and glycolic acid for suture coatings | 354 |
| 4 | US6848152B2 | Method of forming barbs on a suture and apparatus for performing same | 290 |
| 5 | US4832025A | Thermoplastic surgical suture with a melt fused length | 264 |
| 6 | US20080312688A1 | Bi-directional Barbed Suture | 237 |
| 7 | US5722991A | Apparatus and method for attaching surgical needle suture components | 199 |
| 8 | WO2003017850A2 | Method of forming barbs on a suture and apparatus for performing same | 153 |
| 9 | US20090259233A1 | Deployment System For Surgical Suture | 150 |
| 10 | US4705820A | Surgical suture coating | 145 |
Citation counts inside a searched corpus favour older documents that have had decades to accumulate references; treat this table as a map of influence, not of current commercial importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three read-outs from the ranking, the trend and the citation table, translated into what they change for someone drafting or licensing in this space.
The field is not open ground at the top
Five assignees hold 265 of the 342 records in scope. A new entrant filing broad barbed-suture or coated-suture claims is filing into territory five portfolios already occupy, not into a gap.
Activity has flattened, not accelerated
The peak filing year so far is 2018; by the 2022 midpoint annual volume had roughly halved and has not recovered since. That is consistent with a technology where the core claim space was staked out early and later filings are incremental.
One 1970s filing still sets the boundary
The most-cited record in the corpus is a 1973 grant on barbed-suture geometry, with a 2003 successor also in the top five most-cited. Any new barbed-suture claim has to be drafted around both.
Claims skew procedural, not material
Nine in ten records touch A61B (diagnosis and surgery), while materials-adjacent classes like D01F and C08G each stay under 3%. Coating chemistry and fibre composition are claimed far less densely than device geometry.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to surgical sutures and wound closure, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| Aesculap AG | ITV Denkendorf Produktservice GmbH | 10 |
| NAWROCKI JESSE G | LINDH SR DAVID C | 8 |
| Ethicon Inc. | NAWROCKI JESSE G | 6 |
| Aesculap AG | B. Braun Surgical SA | 6 |
| NAWROCKI JESSE G | PERKINS JASON T | 6 |
| Ethicon Inc. | LINDH DAVID C SR | 4 |
| NAWROCKI JESSE G | YUAN J JENNY | 4 |
| NAWROCKI JESSE G | LINDH DAVID C SR | 4 |
Ten co-assignee pairs appear in the data; the strongest, an academic-industrial pairing on textile finishing, recurs at a level (10 shared records) well above the next pairs (8 and 6), suggesting a small number of durable joint-filing relationships rather than a broad collaboration network.
Who holds the ground, and where it thins out
The ranked leaders account for most of the corpus, but the concentration is steep: a handful of names hold the majority of records, and the ranking runs out to single-filing entrants after position ten.
One assignee holds nearly half the corpus
The top-ranked assignee accounts for 159 of the 342 records in scope, close to half the field on its own. That scale typically means a mature, actively maintained portfolio rather than a single landmark filing.
The gap narrows fast after the leader
Fifth place holds 13 records and tenth place holds 6 — a steep drop from the leader's 159. Past the top ten, the remaining 61 ranked assignees in the 71-company ranking each hold small, often single-digit counts.
A wide but shallow tail of filers
The ranking returns 71 companies in total, and the top ten alone cover 89.8% of all 342 records. That leaves the remaining ranked assignees splitting a small residual share, which is where licensing-in or acquisition targets tend to sit.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Ethicon Inc. | 0 | — |
| Covidien LP | 0 | — |
| Quill Medical Inc. | 0 | — |
| Aesculap AG | 0 | — |
| American Cyanamid Co. | 0 | — |
| B. Braun Surgical SA | 0 | — |
| NAWROCKI JESSE G | 0 | — |
| Cilag GmbH International | 0 | — |
Turning this landscape into a filing or licensing decision
The tables above show where the field stands; the next step is usually narrower and specific to one claim or one competitor.
Check freedom-to-operate against the top five
With 77.5% of the 342 records held by five assignees, a targeted claim-chart comparison against those five portfolios will surface most of the real blocking risk before a broader search does.
Run a claim comparison in EurekaWatch for a rebound past the 2018 peak
Filing activity fell from 14 in 2018 to 6 at the 2022 midpoint; tracking whether newer entrants restart growth in the under-claimed IPC branches is worth a standing alert rather than a one-time search.
Set up monitoring in EurekaCommon questions about suture and wound closure patents
In this 342-record dataset, one assignee alone accounts for 159 records, and the top five combined hold 265 records, or 77.5% of the field. That level of concentration means most competitive or freedom-to-operate analysis in this space should start with those few portfolios rather than a broad market scan. The remaining 61 ranked assignees in the 71-company ranking each hold comparatively small counts, forming a long tail rather than a second tier of equal-sized competitors.
US3716058A, granted in 1973, is the most-cited record in this corpus at 933 citations, and its geometry underpins later filings such as US20030149447A1. Whether any specific claim remains in force depends on jurisdiction, maintenance fees and filing date, which is outside what a citation count alone can tell you. What the data does show is that later barbed-suture claims have consistently had to be drafted narrower or around this prior art, which is why it still shows up at the top of citation tables decades later.
The filing trend in this dataset peaked at 14 records in 2018 and had fallen to 6 by the 2022 midpoint, with no recovery since. That pattern is typical of a field where the core claim space around geometry, coating and needle attachment was staked out early by a small number of large assignees, leaving later entrants to file narrower, incremental improvements. It is worth noting that the most recent year or two in any filing trend is understated because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so the true 2025-2026 volume will be higher than currently shown.
The IPC composition data shows heavy concentration in A61B (90.1% of records) and A61L (27.8%), while classes tied to fibre chemistry, textile finishing and packaging each sit under 5%. That gap does not mean those areas are unimportant; it means fewer claims have been staked there, which gives a narrower, well-drafted filing on antibacterial coating chemistry, yarn-finishing treatments or packaging integration more room to stand without colliding with an existing dense claim. Any such filing still needs its own freedom-to-operate check against the top assignees, since large portfolios sometimes hold peripheral claims outside their core IPC cluster.
The recent-year momentum data in this dataset shows the leading assignees, including the top-ranked portfolio holders, recording zero new filings in the latest tracked year. Combined with the broader flat-to-declining trend since the 2018 peak, this suggests the field's largest holders are maintaining existing portfolios rather than expanding them at pace. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, some of this apparent pause will resolve once later filings publish, so it is worth treating the very latest year as provisional rather than a confirmed slowdown.
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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.