Medtech companies are filing more patents than any other industry vertical

The data

According to patent filing activity in 2020, medical technology is the most patented technical field for newly-registered inventions—ahead of digital communications and computer science.

This is a strong indicator that innovation dynamics in MedTech are extremely vibrant, with a large ecosystem of companies striving toward breakthrough innovation at the intersection of medicine and technology.

The insight

A deeper look into the most active medical technology patent-filing companies illustrates that global medical powerhouses Medtronic and Johnson & Johnson lead the pack in terms of volume of patents registered, both with more than 26,000 patents filed in the last 10 years.

What’s particularly interesting about this ranking is that none of the big tech companies, like Google, Intel, or Apple, are among the top 10 patent filers, despite big tech having focused on entering the medical and health sectors in recent years—for instance, by consumerizing the hearing aid market. 

However, their strategy to enter the market appears to be more focused on investing and acquiring respective MedTech startups—through their Corporate Venture Capital arms, for example, as we have seen in a recent CVC analysis.