Geomechanical Rock Testing Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- Concentrated at the top. The five leading assignees hold 157 of 293 records in scope (53.6%), and the top ten hold 227 (77.5%) — a field where a handful of operators and service companies occupy most of the claim space.
- Filing is accelerating again. After a 2017 peak of 36 published records, activity cooled, then filings climbed from 4 in 2021 to 9 in 2024, a 125% rise over that span — with 2025 onward still filling in due to publication lag.
- Testing overlaps drilling more than geophysics. E21B drilling classes touch 49.1% of records and G01N material analysis 39.6%, while G01V geophysics sits at 24.2% — rock property data is being claimed primarily as a drilling-control input, not a standalone measurement.
Filing growth compares 2021 (4 records) with 2024 (9) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 293 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Geomechanical rock property testing spans the methods used to measure how rock deforms and fails under stress — unconfined compressive strength, triaxial compression, dynamic elastic modulus, Biot coefficient, brittleness index and acoustic emission monitoring among them. These measurements feed directly into drilling design, completions planning, and reservoir stability models, which is why the patent activity around them sits so close to oilfield services rather than academic materials science.
The 293 records in scope run from 2015 through the third quarter of 2026, with the most recent one to two years understated because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months. Most documents carry more than one IPC class, which is expected given that a rock-testing method is often claimed alongside the drilling or computational system that consumes its output.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 293 records: how filings moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses the claims actually sit in.
A 2017 peak, a cooling period, then renewed growth
Published records peaked at 36 in 2017, declined over the following years, then rose from 4 in 2021 to 9 in 2024 — a 125% increase across that three-year window. Treat 2025 and 2026 figures as provisional; they will revise upward as pending applications publish.
Drilling and material-analysis classes dominate
E21B (earth and rock drilling) appears on 49.1% of the 293 records and G01N (material analysis and testing) on 39.6%, followed by G01V geophysics at 24.2% and G06F digital data processing at 19.8%. Because records can carry multiple classes, these shares sum to well over 100% — they describe overlap, not market share.
Shares are the percentage of the 293 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Geomechanical Rock Property Testing with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about geomechanical rock property testing and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited records and a representative filing
US20180334897A1 — Drilling control based on brittleness index correlation
Filed by Landmark Graphics, this 2018 publication ties an analytical drilling performance model to a rock brittleness index correlated against a measurable formation property available from log data. The correlation is designed so a single brittleness-correlate value maps to a unique brittleness-index value, letting the system express rate of penetration and other drilling parameters as a function of that index without requiring direct core measurement.Useful as a marker of how brittleness-index claims are being pulled into automated drilling and geosteering control loops, rather than kept as a standalone lab measurement.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20070294034A1 | Method for designing and optimizing drilling and completion operations in hydrocarbon reservoirs | 192 |
| 2 | US5416697A | Method for determining rock mechanical properties using electrical log data | 131 |
| 3 | US20110015907A1 | Petrophysical Method For Predicting Plastic Mechanical Properties In Rock Formations | 128 |
| 4 | US20110011595A1 | Modeling of Hydrocarbon Reservoirs Using Design of Experiments Methods | 124 |
| 5 | US20110094295A1 | Cement testing | 95 |
| 6 | US20190169986A1 | Real-time synthetic logging for optimization of drilling, steering, and stimulation | 71 |
| 7 | US20060131074A1 | Method for estimating confined compressive strength for rock formations utilizing skempton theory | 71 |
| 8 | US7066019B1 | Cavity stability prediction method for wellbores | 67 |
| 9 | US20180120283A1 | Expandable Jacket for Triaxial, Unconfined and Uniaxial Compression Tests and Test Device for Three-Dimension… | 63 |
| 10 | US7953587B2 | Method for designing and optimizing drilling and completion operations in hydrocarbon reservoirs | 58 |
Citation counts accumulate over time, so older documents are structurally favoured — read this table as a map of influential prior art, not of current filing activity.
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Browse MCP servers →What the concentration and citation data indicate
Three signals worth separating: who dominates the ranked list, what the historical prior art rewards, and where activity is actually growing.
A small group occupies most of the claim space
With 157 of 293 records sitting under five assignees and 227 under ten, new entrants are filing into a field where the dominant claim territory around core rock-mechanical testing methods is already staked out by established oilfield-service and major-operator names.
Influential prior art skews older
The highest-cited documents date from the mid-2000s to early 2010s and cover drilling-and-completion optimisation and electrical-log-based rock property estimation — a reminder that citation counts reward age and searchability, not present-day relevance.
Renewed filing activity after a mid-decade lull
Published records fell from the 2017 peak of 36 before recovering: 2021 recorded 4 and 2024 recorded 9, a 125% rise. That recovery, combined with the flat recent-year momentum shown by several leading assignees, suggests the next filing wave may come from outside today's top names.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to geomechanical rock property testing, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the claim space, and where it thins out
The ranked list covers 86 companies total — this is the entire set the data endpoint returns, not a top-50 or top-100 cut. Beyond the leading names, the list runs into a long tail of single- or few-filing entrants.
One filer sits well ahead of the field
The leading assignee holds 48 records, more than double the fifth-place figure of 23 — a gap that marks it as the reference point for freedom-to-operate checks in this space.
A steep drop after the top ten
By the tenth position, record counts have fallen to 12, and the top ten together account for 77.5% of all 293 records — everything past that point is comparatively thin filing activity spread across many names.
Filings cluster within corporate families
The strongest co-assignee pairs link entities inside the same corporate group — shared filings between related Schlumberger entities, and between Chevron and an affiliated security-classified filer — rather than cross-company joint development.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Baker Hughes Holdings LLC | 0 | — |
| ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company | 0 | — |
| Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. (US) | 0 | — |
| Varel Europe SAS | 0 | — |
| Chevron U.S.A. Inc. | 0 | — |
| Saudi Arabian Oil Co. (Saudi Aramco) | 0 | — |
| Varel International Industries, L.P. | 0 | — |
| Saudi Aramco Services Company | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The figures above establish the shape of the field. The next steps depend on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, whitespace filing, or tracking a specific competitor.
Run a freedom-to-operate check
With 77.5% of records held by ten assignees, a new filing in core triaxial-testing or brittleness-index claims needs a targeted clearance search against those names before drafting.
Search the full dataset in EurekaTrack momentum shifts
Several leading assignees show zero recent-year activity, which can mean either a strategic pause or a shift to unpublished filings. Monitoring alerts catch the next move early.
Set up assignee tracking in EurekaScope the under-claimed branches
Shale creep, acoustic emission localisation and Biot coefficient calibration show comparatively light filing density inside a heavily claimed field — worth a deeper prior-art pull before committing to a claim strategy.
Explore white space in EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
Among the 86 ranked assignees, the leading company holds 48 of the 293 records in scope, well ahead of the fifth-ranked assignee at 23. The top five together account for 157 records, or 53.6% of the field, and the top ten account for 227, or 77.5%. That concentration means most core testing methods — triaxial compression, unconfined compressive strength, dynamic elastic modulus — already sit under a small number of oilfield-service and major-operator portfolios.
Filings peaked in 2017 at 36 published records, then declined before recovering: 2021 recorded 4 and 2024 recorded 9, a 125% increase over that three-year span. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 figures in any dataset will look artificially low and should not be read as a slowdown. The 2021-to-2024 recovery is the more reliable recent signal.
E21B (earth and rock drilling) appears in 49.1% of the 293 records, making it the most common overlap, followed by G01N (material analysis and testing) at 39.6% and G01V (geophysics and gravity surveying) at 24.2%. G06F digital data processing shows up in 19.8% of records, reflecting how much of this testing now feeds automated drilling or modelling systems rather than standing alone as a lab method. Because records can carry multiple classes, these percentages overlap rather than sum to 100%.
US20180334897A1, assigned to Landmark Graphics and published in 2018, claims an automated drilling performance model that correlates a rock brittleness index with a measurable formation property from log data, so that a single log-derived value maps to a unique brittleness-index value. It expresses drilling parameters such as rate of penetration as a function of that correlation. Anyone building brittleness-index-driven drilling control or geosteering logic should review its correlation and mapping claims specifically, since that is the mechanism being protected rather than the brittleness index itself.
The lighter-filed branches sit adjacent to the dense E21B and G01N core: shale creep behaviour under cyclic loading, Biot coefficient calibration workflows, acoustic emission fracture localisation, and cement-rock interface testing linked to the small C04B class (1.0% of records) all show comparatively few filings relative to the field's overall density. That does not guarantee the space is legally open — it means fewer documents were captured by this search, so a targeted clearance search is still required before filing there.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.