Yes, this Shulze guy is quite solid indeed..

There is a US patent application 20050038505 filed in Sept 2004 and published in Feb 2005 (not granted yet), which I think was filed to rectify or add on to the United States Patent 6939376.

Its claims include the following:

28. An endovascular stent for placement at a vascular injury site, for inhibiting restenosis at the site, comprising a radially expandable, tubular body formed of a lattice of connected filaments, each filament having outside, side, and inside support surfaces, and a drug-release layer containing a restenosis-inhibiting drug, said layer coating the outside surfaces, but not the inside surfaces, of said filaments.

29. The stent of claim 28, wherein said layer coats the outside and side surfaces of said filaments. 

35. The stent of claim 28, wherein the inside surfaces of said stent body are coated with a second drug-release layer containing a second drug. 

Claim 35 appears to be an extra part covering drugs like antiplatelet drugs into the lumen. Yes, claim 28, which appears trivial has definately some great benefits..as what's reported.

Regarding JNJ's Costar stent.. I am not sure if the drug is just pure or mixed with the polymer. Maybe the drug could be mixed with the polymer to control release and the plug part could be a more pure form of the polymer.  

Conor claimed that their reservoir holes can give better timing for drug eluting timing. If the drug reservoir holes (the eluting direction be it the anti-restenosis drug hole or antiplatelet agent hole) are not covered by polymer, how can the drug/agent be eluted with precise optimal quantity and timing? It is the polymer technology that enables precise optimal drug eluting timing. Now Conor platform is merely using the polymer to "block" drug/agent from eluting out of one end of the reservoirs. Plus, the drugs are "lumped" together in reservoir holes which are quite far apart because some of the holes are used for anti-restentosis drugs, some antiplatelet agents. How is the wounded vessel wall going to be properly "dosed" with anti-restentosis drugs? Plus, patients are already taking Plavix blood thinning medication so why do patients need to be dosed with another antiplatelet medication inside the vessel? This could be a classic case of "too many cooks will spoil the soup". Too many pattern and end up the stent will not work. Costar has all the lastest technological ingredients as the next generation DES: Novel reservoir drug holes, flexible but tough Cobalt Chromium metal strut, biodegradable polymer, dual drug function of anti-restenosis plus antiplatelet drugs, etc. Everything just "Ho Kuah Boh Ho Chiak". End up this DES is the worst stent this industry has ever seen. JNJ claims that Costar's failure is due to poor drug dosage. I wonder they really know what is the real root of the failure. Looks like their answer are just pure guess and they themselves have no freaking clue how to rectify it or can it ever be rectified at all.     

Aiyah... this is exactly what I did not want to comment on earlier. But my observations are along the same lines as yours..

Anyway, It does not mean that there is only 15% contact of the drug to the vessel.. or 85% BMS contact with the vessel for the Nevo Stent. From slide 8 of http://www.europcronline.com/diapos/EuroPCR2008/4568-20080515_1254_Room01_Rogers_Campbell/Rogers-20080515-1254-Room01.pdf

it is clear that the holes are punched directly through the struts. From slide 20, you can observe that in each reservoir, it is filled with some drug (colored with either blue or green) and a layer of biodegadable polymer (indicated as grey). I think, in JNJ's design the polymer is not mixed with the drug (unlike Biomatrix). It is just used as a plug to plug one end of the hole. So drug is released mostly from the opposite end of the polymer. Over time, the polymer should dissolve and the skin grows through the hole as well (see slide 14 at 90days). So the hole with the antithrombotic drug (e.g. antiplatelet), is the one that has the polymer (opposite to the lumen) in contact with the vessel wall. This I think is the 15% part. Another way of looking at it is that 50% of the reservoirs are the only parts with sirolimus in contact with the vessel walls.

I will check the patents over the next few days..