US Patent Issued to Covidien on June 2 for "Apparatus for endoscopic procedures" (Connecticut Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 2 -- United States Patent no. 12,642,548, issued on June 2, was assigned to Covidien LP (Mansfield, Mass.).

"Apparatus for endoscopic procedures" was invented by Stanislaw Kostrzewski (Newton, Conn.), Ernest Aranyi (Easton, Conn.) and Paul Scirica (Huntington, Conn.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An electromechanical surgical system having an instrument housing for connecting with a shaft assembly, a shaft assembly, and an end effector. The end effector is an articulating end effector and the system includes a cable tensioning system for tensioning the articulation cables. The system includes a clutch mechanism for preventing slippage of a drive cable. The electromechani...