The claim limitation that decides scope here is a geometric one, and it is worth reading before any characterization. On June 30, 2026, US12667719B2, "Foramina-filling implantable medical lead," was granted to Medtronic, Inc. The label first: this is an issued grant, not a published application. The claims are fixed as allowed, and what follows describes what independent claim 1 actually recites — the enforceable scope on the face of the document, not a pending request.

Claim 1 is directed to an implantable medical system whose lead carries three cooperating elements: a lead body with a distal portion, a fixation mechanism coupled to that distal portion, and an electrode array disposed on the fixation mechanism and electrically coupled to the lead body to generate a stimulation field. That much is ordinary lead architecture. The limitation that narrows the claim is the shape and seating of the fixation mechanism, which is recited in two-diameter terms:

wherein, in a deployed configuration, the fixation mechanism is configured to anchor the implantable medical lead to a sacrum or tissue surrounding the sacrum to position the electrode array to deliver the stimulation field in or adjacent to a foramen of the sacrum, wherein, in the deployed configuration of the fixation mechanism, the body portion is configured to contact a first surface within the foramen of the sacrum, and wherein, in the deployed configuration of the fixation mechanism, the end portion defines a diameter larger than the body portion and is configured to engage a second surface of the sacrum different than the first surface such that in the deployed configuration of the fixation mechanism, the end portion is configured to engage the second surface while the body portion contacts the first surface.— Foramina-filling implantable medical lead, US12667719B2

Parse the geometry. The fixation mechanism has a body portion and an end portion. In the deployed configuration, the body portion contacts a first surface inside the foramen, and the end portion — defined as larger in diameter than the body portion — engages a second, different sacral surface, with both engagements holding at once. That simultaneous two-surface, two-diameter engagement is the claim's center of gravity: it is what distinguishes the claimed anchor from a single-diameter plug and what the word "foramina-filling" in the title points at. The claim does not require a specific disease or outcome; it is directed to the mechanical seating of an electrode array within the foramen.

How the dependent claims build out the anchor

The dependent claims map the anchor's design space. Claim 2 adds that the body portion includes an expandable portion; claim 4 adds that the body portion includes a stent; claim 6 recites a tapered body shape; and claim 10 recites a body and end portion formed from a plurality of struts. Claim 5 requires the body portion to radially urge against the first surface within the foramen — a press-fit limitation. Claim 3 introduces a second end portion opposite the first, also larger in diameter than the body, turning the single-flare anchor into a double-flare, dog-bone-like form. Independent claim 11 recites the lead on its own (rather than as part of a system), independent claim 19 recasts the fixation mechanism explicitly as a stent, and independent claim 23 recites the body and end portions as intersecting struts. The picture across the independent claims is a family of anchoring geometries — mechanism, bare lead, and stent forms — all sharing the two-diameter, two-surface engagement.

The classification places the grant precisely. The CPC symbols lead with A61N 1/0558 and include A61N 1/36062, A61N 1/37211, and A61N 1/37518 — all within A61N 1, the class for electrotherapy, and specifically the neighborhoods for stimulation leads and their construction and connection. That is the electrotherapy-lead corner of the landscape, not a generic implant-anchor class, which is consistent with a claim whose novelty sits in how a stimulation electrode is fixed in place rather than in the stimulation itself.

Where it lands in the June 30 Medtronic set

The lead grant did not issue in isolation. Read against Medtronic's own record in the same June 30 drop, it is one node in a device cluster. US12667416B2 is directed to a renal neuromodulation device delivering a thermal element to a renal artery by an intravascular path — a different anatomy and a different energy modality, but the same interventional-device family. US12667425B2 is directed to a computational-fluid-dynamics system that marks target and avoidance regions for a neuromodulation catheter, and US12670646B2 is directed to extended-field-of-view X-ray image reconstruction — the imaging and planning layers around the hardware. US12667306B2 is directed to a method that reads a patient's local field potential to output timing indications, extending the set into bioelectric sensing. The lead grant sits among these as the fixation-and-placement piece: the claims cover how the electrode array is held where it needs to be.

For an IP reader, the discipline is to keep the document at its stage and read it for what it recites. This is a granted patent, so the claims are enforceable as issued rather than provisional; the scope is what claim 1's two-diameter, two-surface fixation limitation defines, together with the expandable, stent, strut, and double-end variants in the dependent and other independent claims. Whether any particular product or competing lead falls inside that scope is an infringement question that turns on the claim language applied to a specific structure, and this brief takes no position on it. What the record shows plainly is a granted claim directed to a specific way of seating a stimulation electrode inside a sacral foramen — and a June 30 issue day on which that claim arrived next to the imaging, planning, and sensing grants that surround it.