U.S. Patent 7954686 was awarded to Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc. on 2011-06-07 and describes a “Surgical stapler with apparatus for adjusting staple height.” This patent has been cited 391 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 stapling instrument including a staple sled which can be advanced and/or retracted relative to first and second jaw members, wherein the staple sled can be configured to deploy staples from a staple cartridge in one of the first and second jaw members. In at least one embodiment, the other of the first and second jaw members can include an anvil having at least one forming surface which can be configured to deform the staples as they are deployed from the staple cartridge. In at least one form of the invention, the anvil can be movably adjustable relative to the staple cartridge in order to adjust the distance in which the staples are deformed. In various embodiments, the anvil can be adjusted by a slidable adjusting plate and/or a rotatable cam. Link: U.S. Patent 7954686

This patent was originally filed on 2008-09-19 which gives it a processing time of 991 days, compared to an average processing time of 1097 in the field. Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc. has 2128 total patents. The first named inventor is James J. Bedi of Cincinnati, OH. The primary examiner was Brian D Nash.

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