Formation Testing Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
Formation Testing and Fluid Analysis Patents: Mapping the Filers and the Open Claim Space
One filer dominates. the leading assignee holds 242 families against a fifth-place figure of 94 and a tenth-place figure of 15 — a steep drop-off, not a level field. Filings rose from 11 in 2017 to a peak of 42 in 2020, then eased; the 2021-to-2024 span — the last stretch with complete publication data — shows a -13% change (23 to 20). 2025 and 2026 counts will keep rising as publications catch up with the roughly 18-month filing-to-publication lag.
- 1SCHLUMBERGER TECH CORP242
- 2SCHLUMBERGER TECHNOLOGY BV176
- 3SCHLUMBERGER HLDG LTD122
- 4SERVICES PETROLIERS SCHLUMBERGER SA111
- 5SCHLUMBERGER CANADA LTD94
See the full formation testing and fluid analysis analysis in Eureka
- The complete ranking, not just the top five
- Every IPC branch with its share of the corpus
- The most-cited records, and where claim space is still thin
Common questions on this landscape
Who holds the most patents in formation testing and downhole fluid analysis?
One assignee group leads clearly, with 242 families against a fifth-place figure of 94 and a tenth-place figure of 15 among the 100 companies in the ranking. That leading position is filed across several related corporate entities rather than one single legal name, which is common for large oilfield-services groups that restructure subsidiaries over time. A freedom-to-operate check should treat the group as a whole rather than searching a single entity name.
Is patent filing in this field growing or slowing down?
Filings peaked at 42 in 2020 and the last fully complete comparison period, 2021 to 2024, shows a -13% change from 23 down to 20 filings. That is a real cooling, but it is not the same as the field going quiet: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 and 2026 figures in any dataset will look artificially low until later filings publish. Judge momentum on 2024-and-earlier data, not on the tail years.
What technology areas are covered under formation testing and fluid analysis patents?
The dataset centres on E21B (earth and rock drilling), which appears in 81.6% of the 659 records, reflecting the downhole hardware — probes, packers, pressure tools — that does the physical sampling. G01N (material analysis, 34.0%) and G01V (geophysics, 23.5%) cover the fluid-property and formation-evaluation methods layered on that hardware, while smaller shares in G06F, G01J, G06N, G02B and F15D mark digital processing, optical sensing, AI-based inference and fluid-flow control respectively.
Disclaimer. This analysis is based on Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent records and is provided for general information and reference only. Patent data carries inherent limitations — recent filings are under-counted because of publication lag, counts may be on a record or family basis, classification and applicant-name data may contain errors or duplicates, and the underlying search query defines the scope shown — so the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing here is an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Verify independently and review with qualified patent and legal professionals before acting on it.
Method: Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Formation Testing and Fluid Analysis covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish. Every share divides by all records in scope. Data: Patsnap Eureka. See the full landscape report.