Hydraulic Fracture Design Patents: Who Leads, Trends 2026
Hydraulic Fracture Design and Modelling Patents
306 of 406 records sit inside E21B (earth & rock drilling), with G01V geophysics claims layered on top of 41.1% of the set — this is a drilling-domain field with a heavy geophysics overlay, not a pure software play. Filings rose to a peak of 20 in 2019, then eased; the 2021-to-2024 span shows a -29% change (7 to 5), the last comparison the dataset supports without leaning on incomplete recent years.
- 1HALLIBURTON ENERGY SERVICES INC88
- 2SCHLUMBERGER TECHNOLOGY BV86
- 3SCHLUMBERGER TECH CORP81
- 4SCHLUMBERGER CANADA LTD60
- 5SERVICES PETROLIERS SCHLUMBERGER SA59
See the full hydraulic fracture design and modelling 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 about this landscape
Who holds the most patents in hydraulic fracture design and modelling?
One assignee leads the ranked list with 88 filings, well ahead of the fifth-ranked company at 59 and the tenth at 13. The ranking covers 73 companies in total, drawn from patent families, and several of the top entries are related corporate entities of the same group rather than independent competitors. Because the strongest co-assignee pairs link sibling entities within one family, checking a single entity name can understate that group’s real coverage.
Is patent filing in hydraulic fracture modelling increasing or slowing down?
Filing peaked at 20 records in 2019 and has since eased, with a documented -29% change between 2021 (7 filings) and 2024 (5 filings) — the last span the dataset can treat as complete. Years after 2024 show lower counts, but that reflects the roughly 18-month lag between filing and publication rather than a confirmed drop-off. Treat any apparent decline in 2025 or 2026 figures as an artefact of incomplete data, not a settled trend.
What patent classes cover hydraulic fracture design technology?
The dominant classification is E21B, earth and rock drilling for wells, covering 75.6% of the 406 records in scope. G01V, geophysics and gravity surveying, appears on 41.1% of records, and G06F, digital data processing, on 22.9% — reflecting the field’s mix of physical drilling operations and computational modelling. Because a single record can carry several IPC classes, these shares add up to more than 100% and should not be summed into a single total.
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 Hydraulic Fracture Design and Modelling 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.