U.S. Patent 7731724 was awarded to Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc. on 2010-06-08 and describes a “Surgical clip advancement and alignment mechanism.” This patent has been cited 249 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 clip applier and methods for applying surgical clips to a vessel, duct, shunt, etc., during a surgical procedure are provided. In one exemplary embodiment, a surgical clip applier is provided having a housing with a trigger movably coupled thereto and an elongate shaft extending therefrom with opposed jaws formed on a distal end thereof. The trigger is adapted to advance a clip to position the clip between the jaws, and to move the jaws from an open position to a closed position to crimp the clip positioned therebetween. Link: U.S. Patent 7731724

This patent was originally filed on 2005-04-14 which gives it a processing time of 1881 days, compared to an average processing time of 1942 in the field. Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc. has 2128 total patents. The first named inventor is Thomas W. Huitema of Cincinnati, OH. The primary examiner was Anhtuan T Nguyen.

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