US Patent Issued to Covidien on April 22 for "Surgical stapling instrument with clamp detection assembly" (Chinese Inventor)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 6 -- United States Patent no. 12,279,773, issued on April 22, was assigned to Covidien LP (Mansfield, Mass.).

"Surgical stapling instrument with clamp detection assembly" was invented by Lan Chang (Shanghai).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A surgical stapling instrument (10) includes anvil and cartridge portions (100, 200) operably coupled together. The anvil and cartridge portions (100, 200) are transitionable between clamped and unclamped configurations. The surgical stapling instrument (10) also includes a clamp detection assembly (300) with a plunger (312) slidably disposed in a chamber (310) of a housing (302), a block (314) with an aperture (316) attached to the plun...