Ideas and Inventions Welcome

Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc. (EES) welcomes the submission of all ideas. Over the years we have found that these ideas fall into two categories: Suggestions and Inventions. Suggestions provide useful insight into the needs and concerns of our customers. However, they lack the essential elements of an invention. The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) defines invention elements as Novel, Nonobvious and Useful.

Inventors must provide sufficient detail to explain why an invention is needed and how to build it. One way to distinguish suggestions from inventions is to think of suggestions as telling us what you need, but leaving it to us to figure out how to produce it. An invention, on the other hand, provides complete details and description around the need, rationale, and building specifications. EES is very interested in hearing from you whether your ideas are suggestions or inventions. Use the links below to the Johnson & Johnson Innovation Portal to submit your ideas online.

Why EES

EES has extensive experience in developing medical devices. In addition to our own expertise, EES has access to all the resources of our parent company, Johnson & Johnson – the industry leader in health care products. EES values the contributions of outside inventors as a means to maintain our leadership as an innovator in medical technology development. In the past, EES has licensed or acquired patents from dozens of individual inventors or companies that now serve as the basic intellectual property behind more than 200 products. EES pays compensation to these inventors and has worked with many of them to develop their innovations.

The three most compelling reasons that would interest an inventor in a partnership with EES are:

Leadership: EES is the worldwide market share leader in minimally invasive surgical devices.

Experience & expertise: EES offers extraordinary preclinical, technical and market resources. Along with other Johnson & Johnson companies, such as Corporate Biomaterials (CBC), Corporate Office of Science and Technology (COSAT), and Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation (JJDC), EES can provide a multitude of skills and resources to assess, test, fund and ultimately sell your invention.

Worldwide sales force: EES employs sales representatives worldwide who can promote and sell your invention.

Areas of Interest

EES develops and markets a broad portfolio of advanced surgical instruments for less invasive and traditional surgery. Our mission is to help physicians around the world transform patient care through innovation. Our focus is on designing innovative, procedure-enabling devices for interventional diagnosis and treatment of various diseases and conditions in the areas of general and thoracic surgery, gynecology, and oncology.

Looking for Big Ideas

EES has a particular interest in making advances in diagnostic and therapeutic procedures or devices that do one or more of the following:

• Enable earlier discharge from the medical treatment facility
• Enable a shift in the primary site of care to a less intensive site (e.g., inpatient to outpatient, or outpatient to physician’s office)
• Provide earlier detection and more effective treatment of cancer
• Reduce intraoperative pain or anxiety
• Enable diagnostic or therapeutic procedures via a less traumatic or invasive approach (e.g. percutaneous natural orifice, or laparoscopic procedures).
• Enable precise, targeted treatment of pathology, where the current standard of care relies upon a systemic therapy
• Enable the diagnosis and treatment of patients during the same procedure
• Ablate pathological tissues, where the current standard of care requires excision

Our interests are certainly not limited to the areas mentioned above. EES welcomes any idea that can positively impact the standard of patient care. If you have a suggestion or invention you would like us to consider, you can use the online submission process on the Johnson & Johnson Innovation Portal now.