U.S. Patent 8365976 was awarded to Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc. on 2013-02-05 and describes a “Surgical staples having dissolvable, bioabsorbable or biofragmentable portions and stapling instruments for deploying the same.” This patent has been cited 275 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 staple including a crown comprised of a dissolvable, bioabsorbable, or biofragmentable material, a first deformable member, and a second member. In at least one embodiment, the crown connects the first member and the second member, however, after the crown has been dissolved, the first member is unconnected to the second member and, as a result, the first and second members can move relative to each other. Accordingly, the staple can be rigid during the early stages of healing and can be flexible during the latter stages of healing, for example. In various embodiments, the first and second members of the staple are also comprised of a dissolvable, bioabsorbable, or biofragmentable material. In these embodiments, the first and second members can be constructed so that the crown and first and second members dissolve at different rates and/or dissolve away at different times. Link: U.S. Patent 8365976

This patent was originally filed on 2006-09-29 which gives it a processing time of 2321 days, compared to an average processing time of 1218 in the field. Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc. has 2128 total patents. The first named inventor is Michael A. Murray of Bellevue, WA. The primary examiner was Hemant M Desai.

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