U.S. Patent 8028885 was awarded to Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc. on 2011-10-04 and describes a “Electric surgical instrument with optimized power supply and drive.” This patent has been cited 276 times by other U.S. patents which places it in the top 500 cited patents since 2010 according to our law firm research, and makes it of the most innovative medical technology patents in the field of instruments. The abstract states:

A surgical instrument includes a surgical end effector having at least one actuation assembly to effect a surgical procedure when actuated, an electric motor operationally connected to the end effector to operate the at least one actuation assembly, and a power supply electrically connected to the motor and selectively powering the motor to actuate the actuation assembly. The power supply has a battery cell with a critical current rate and, when activated to power the motor and actuate the actuation assembly, operates the cell at a super-critical current rate or at an average current rate above the critical current rate. The power supply selectively powers the motor to actuate the assembly less than 16 times during a clinical life of at least one of the end effector, the motor, and the power supply. When actuated, the assembly operates only between 0.5 seconds and 16 seconds in duration. Link: U.S. Patent 8028885

This patent was originally filed on 2007-02-12 which gives it a processing time of 1695 days, compared to an average processing time of 1226 in the field. Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc. has 2128 total patents. The first named inventor is Thomas O. Bales, Jr. of Miami, FL. The primary examiner was Rinaldi Rada.

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