Following on from our recent post on the Most Opposed Companies at the EPO 2023 we’ve broken that data up and looked into a smaller subset, and specifically Medical devices. This has broadly been defined as technology falling within IPC codes A61 and H04 (covering medical or veterinary science devices, and hearing aids).
Going clockwise from 12 o’clock, the data is ordered by the total number of oppositions received in 2023, and then for a given company the patents are ordered by the number of oppositions filed. Hovering over a patent shows the title and also lists the opponents. You can click on a company to just see their opposed patents, and you can also click through the EPO register for each patent.
The data shows that the most opposed company is GN Group, who make hearing aids (and high levels of oppositions between hearing aid companies is something we’ve seen before, from our 2021 special report on engineering oppositions). Next up is St Jude Medical and Boston Scientific, and both in the area of interventional cardiology with heart valves and stents featuring heavily. The technology profile broadens as we go down the list, with laser eye surgery, dialysis, and wound care systems featuring. We can also see that, on average, most oppositions are single opponent oppositions.
Click on the patent for more detail and the proprietor to highlight only the associated patents.
