U.S. Patent 7799039 was awarded to Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc. on 2010-09-21 and describes a “Surgical instrument having a hydraulically actuated end effector.” This patent has been cited 445 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 hydraulically actuated surgical instrument. The instrument may comprise a handle portion and a shaft. The shaft is mechanically coupled to the handle. The instrument may also include an end effector mechanically coupled to the shaft along its longitudinal axis. The end effector may comprise a surgical implement and a hydraulic device. At least a portion of the surgical implement may be translatable along a transverse axis, wherein the transverse axis is substantially perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the shaft. Also, the hydraulic device may be positioned to be expandable toward the surgical instrument in a direction substantially parallel to the transverse axis of the shaft. Link: U.S. Patent 7799039

This patent was originally filed on 2005-11-09 which gives it a processing time of 1777 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 Jerome R. Morgan of Cincinnati, OH. The assistant examiner was Alexander Orkin.

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