Intellectual Property and Royalty Payments Among Foot and Ankle Surgery Fellowship Faculty

Faculty of the American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons and American Orthopedic Foot and Ankle Society fellowship programs are uniquely positioned to provide advanced clinical and surgical training to fellows. One aspect of this training may include product design and mentorship through the associated intellectual property (IP) and patent timeline. This study describes the payments received and IP held among foot and ankle surgery fellowship faculty. A review of foot and ankle surgeons with royalties or license payments disclosed on the CMS Open Payments Database from 2014 to 2020 was conducted. Members with payments were then cross-referenced with the US Patent Full-Text Database to identify patents held. Fellowship affiliation, practice location, patent office, number of patents, citations, patent h-index, type of patent, and yearly payment values were recorded. Among the 2801 surgeons, 53 fellowship affiliates and 46 nonaffiliates maintained at least 1 patent and royalty/license payment. A total of 576 patents and 19,191 citations were assessed. The median number of patents and citations held by fellowship faculty was 3 and 60, respectively, while the median total payment value reached $165,197.09. Fixation devices comprised most of the patents and citations. Payment value positively correlated with number of patents held (p = .01), citations (p = .007), and patent h-index (p = .01) among fellowship-affiliated surgeons. Foot and ankle surgery fellowship faculty payments for IP are associated with the number and citability of patents held. While a small proportion of faculty were paid for intellectual property, the number of patents held and citations was comparable to other specialties.