Valve Frame Materials and Crimping Patents: Who Leads, Gaps 2026
- 51.2% of all 3,471 records sit with just five assignees, with one leader alone holding 1,237 records — this is a field with an entrenched core, not an open race.
- Filing grew 2017 through a 2020 peak of 295 then eased; the 2021→2024 window shows a -35% shift from 243 to 157, the last year the trend can be read as complete.
- A61F implant claims cover 86.7% of records while alloy-specific claims under C22C sit at just 0.8% — material science framed as metallurgy, not device geometry, is thin.
Filing growth compares 2021 (243 records) with 2024 (157) — 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 3,471 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this patent set covers
Valve frame materials and crimping sits at the intersection of structural heart device design and metals engineering: how a nitinol or stainless frame is cut, heat-set and crimped onto a delivery system without cracking struts, losing radial force, or fatiguing under years of cardiac cycling. The search spans records that combine frame or crimping language with functional claims — radial force, fatigue life, crimp damage, recoil behaviour, strut geometry, corrosion resistance — so the corpus is deliberately narrower than ‘heart valve’ at large.
Coverage runs from 2015-01-01 to the 2026-07-31 cut-off across 3,471 published records, drawn primarily from US, EPO, WIPO, German and Australian filings. Because publication trails filing by roughly 18 months, the tail years understate real activity and should be read with that lag in mind.
Filing trend and IPC composition
The chart pairs annual filing counts with the IPC subclasses that recur across the corpus, showing both when activity moved and where claims are actually written.
Filings rose to a 2020 peak, then cooled
Annual publications climbed from 254 in 2017 to a peak of 295 in 2020. The only clean multi-year comparison available, 2021 to 2024, shows a -35% move from 243 to 157 records — the most recent complete read on direction; 2025 and 2026 are still filling in and should not be read as a continued decline.
Implant claims dominate; alloy-specific claims are rare
A61F (implants & prostheses) appears on 86.7% of the 3,471 records, confirming that most filings are framed as device structure. A61B (15.3%) and A61M (11.1%) cover surgical and delivery-fluid overlap. Narrower classes — B25B hand tools/wrenches (2.1%), B30B presses (1.6%) and C22C alloys (0.8%) — show that crimping tooling and alloy composition are claimed far less often than the device geometry they enable.
Shares are the percentage of the 3,471 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Valve Frame Materials and Crimping with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about valve frame materials and crimping and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited prior art and a representative filing
WO2021002766A1 — Balloon-expandable heart valve frame with anisotropic crystalline structure
The application describes a balloon-expandable valve frame cut from sheet metal or metal alloy with a strut-based, multirow construction combining smaller and larger cells. Its distinguishing feature is a fixed, directional, anisotropic crystalline structure imposed during plastic processing of the sheet — potentially layered two- or three-ply, each layer carrying its own directional grain — engineered into specific zones of the frame construction.Filed by Balton Sp. z o.o., published 2021-01-07.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20040260389A1 | Artificial valve prosthesis with improved flow dynamics | 1,671 |
| 2 | US20120123529A1 | Prosthetic heart valve | 1,493 |
| 3 | US20070043435A1 | Non-cylindrical prosthetic valve system for transluminal delivery | 1,275 |
| 4 | WO2008150529A1 | Prosthetic heart valves | 909 |
| 5 | US20080140189A1 | System and method for transapical delivery of an annulus anchored self-expanding valve | 880 |
| 6 | US20050283231A1 | Everting heart valve | 864 |
| 7 | US20090287299A1 | Stents for prosthetic heart valves | 827 |
| 8 | US8652203B2 | Replacement heart valves, delivery devices and methods | 825 |
| 9 | US20040186558A1 | Implantable vascular device | 801 |
| 10 | US9393110B2 | Prosthetic heart valve | 674 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they've had longer to accumulate them — read this as a map of influence on later claim drafting, not a ranking of current importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three patterns stand out once the raw counts are read against each other: concentration at the top, a cooling but not collapsing filing rate, and a heavy skew toward device-structure claims over materials-science claims.
The core is locked up, not contested
With the leader alone at 1,237 records and the top five combined controlling 51.2% of the field, new entrants are filing into occupied claim space at the device level. The long tail below rank ten (58 records) suggests most competitors hold single-digit families rather than sustained programmes.
Activity has eased from its 2020 peak
Filings peaked at 295 in 2020 and the only complete year-over-year comparison, 2021 to 2024, shows a -35% pull-back. Recent-year figures for individual assignees echo this — several leaders show sharp year-on-year drops — but 2025-2026 data is still incomplete due to publication lag.
Materials science is under-claimed relative to geometry
A61F implant claims cover 86.7% of records, but alloy-composition claims under C22C sit at just 0.8% and hand-tool/crimping-press classes (B25B, B30B) sit near 2% each. Most of the field claims what the frame does, not what it's made of or how it's mechanically processed.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to valve frame materials and crimping, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the frame, and where the gaps sit
The leaderboard reflects decades of transcatheter valve development by the largest device makers, with a long tail of smaller specialists filing narrowly around specific frame or crimping mechanics.
One assignee dominates the corpus outright
The top-ranked assignee alone accounts for more records than the next four combined, reflecting a broad transcatheter valve portfolio that extends into frame geometry, crimping tooling and delivery mechanics.
Ranks six through ten add less than ten points of share
Moving from the top 5 (51.2%) to the top 10 (60.7%) adds under ten percentage points, meaning the next tier of competitors — cardiac-specific specialists and diversified device makers — hold meaningfully smaller, though still active, portfolios.
Cross-filing is rare and clinically driven
Only ten co-assignee pairings appear in the corpus, the strongest linking a major device maker with an NHS trust — suggesting collaborative filings track specific clinical research partnerships rather than broad industry alliances.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Edwards Lifesciences Corp | 11 | -72% |
| REVALVE SOLUTIONS INC | 1 | -80% |
| Medtronic Inc | 0 | — |
| Wave LLC V | 0 | -100% |
| Valve Medical Ltd | 0 | — |
| Cook Medical Technologies LLC | 0 | — |
| Caisson Interventional LLC | 0 | -100% |
| Boston Scientific Scimed Inc | 0 | -100% |
Where to take this analysis
The figures above establish the shape of the field; the next step is usually a targeted freedom-to-operate or whitespace check against a specific claim concept.
Map a specific frame or crimping claim against the leader's portfolio
With one assignee holding 1,237 records, a proposed claim on frame geometry or crimping mechanics is more likely to run into their prior art than anyone else's — start there before drafting.
Run a portfolio comparison in Eureka →Check the under-claimed alloy and tooling branches
C22C, B25B and B30B classes sit well under 3% of records each. If your concept is materials- or tooling-specific rather than device-structure, this is where a first claim has more room.
Explore white space in Eureka →Questions practitioners ask about this field
One assignee leads the ranked field with 1,237 records out of 3,471 in scope, well ahead of the next four competitors combined, who together with the leader make up 51.2% of all records. The remaining ranked companies form a long tail, with tenth place holding only 58 records. This concentration means most new filings in frame geometry or crimping mechanics will need to be checked against that leader's portfolio first.
Filings rose from 254 in 2017 to a peak of 295 in 2020, then eased; the cleanest year-over-year comparison available, 2021 to 2024, shows a -35% move from 243 to 157 records. Because patent publication typically lags filing by about 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 figures in any dataset are understated and should not be read as evidence of continued decline. Treat 2024 as the most recent complete year.
Most records in this field claim the frame at the device-structure level — 86.7% carry an A61F (implants & prostheses) classification, describing strut layout, cell size or delivery mechanics. Far fewer claim the underlying metallurgy directly: only 0.8% of records fall under C22C, the alloys classification. That gap means claims narrowly drawn around alloy composition or crystalline structure face less direct prior art than claims on frame shape.
WO2021002766A1 describes a balloon-expandable valve frame cut from sheet metal with a strut-based, multirow cell construction, distinguished by a fixed, directional, anisotropic crystalline structure imposed during plastic processing — including layered sheet variants where each layer carries its own grain direction. It's a materials-and-process claim layered onto a standard multirow frame geometry, filed by Balton Sp. z o.o. Anyone using directionally processed sheet metal in a similarly zoned frame construction should review it closely, though the C22C classification's low overall density (0.8% of records) suggests few competing filings claim the same processing detail.
The classification data points to alloy-specific processing (C22C at 0.8% of records) and crimping-tool mechanics (B25B hand tools at 2.1%, B30B presses at 1.6%) as consistently under-claimed relative to the device-structure claims that dominate under A61F. Sub-areas like directional grain control during sheet processing, multi-layer strut lamination, and post-crimp recoil measurement methods show low density in this corpus. That doesn't guarantee an open field — it means fewer records to search against, which still warrants a targeted freedom-to-operate check.
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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.
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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.