Managed Pressure Drilling Process Automation Patent Landscape 2026
- Filing already peaked. 2021 was the high point at 11 families; by the 2022 midpoint filings had halved, and the trend has not recovered since.
- Claim space is almost entirely one IPC subclass. 44 of 45 families sit in E21B, with only a single record touching valve hardware (F16K) — automation logic, not mechanical actuation, is where the crowding is.
- No assignee is currently active. Every tracked assignee, including Halliburton and Weatherford entities, shows zero filings in the latest year — momentum has stalled across the board, not just at one company.
Filing growth compares 2021 (11 records) with 2024 (2) — 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.
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks 45 patent families published between 2015 and the 2026 data cut-off that combine managed pressure drilling (MPD) terminology with automated pressure control, closed-loop drilling or autonomous drilling claim language, filtered to core drilling-control and drilling-tool IPC classes. It is a narrow, control-systems-focused slice of the broader MPD field rather than a survey of drilling hardware in general.
Because publication lags filing by roughly eighteen months, the most recent year in the trend understates real filing activity; treat 2025 and 2026 figures as a floor, not a ceiling. Family-level counting is used throughout so that continuation practice and multi-jurisdiction refiling of the same invention do not inflate any single assignee's footprint.
Filing trend, technology composition and jurisdictions
Three views of the same 45-family set: when the inventions were filed, what technical class they were filed under, and where applicants sought protection.
Filing trend: a 2021 peak, then decline
Filings rose from 3 in 2017 to a peak of 11 in 2021, then fell to 4 by 2022 and have not returned to peak levels. Read the tail years cautiously given publication lag, but the shape of the decline from the peak is consistent enough to treat as real.
IPC composition: almost entirely E21B
44 of 45 records classify under E21B (earth and rock drilling for wells); only one touches F16K (valves and taps). The dataset is overwhelmingly about drilling-process control logic rather than the valve or actuator hardware that implements it — a gap explored further in the white-space section below.
Shares are the percentage of the 45 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Managed Pressure Drilling Process Automation with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about managed pressure drilling process automation and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited control patents in this set
Surge reduction system for running liner casing in managed pressure drilling wells (US20210317711A1)
A system for controlling surge pressure and deployed into a wellbore drilled using a managed pressure drilling technique includes auto-fill float equipment allowing flow into a liner casing string, a drillpipe diverter providing a flow path between a drillpipe landing string and an annulus, and a drillpipe flow restrictor selectively blocking the flow path from the top of the drillpipe landing string while allowing fluid to be displaced up the liner casing string and into the annulus. The drillpipe flow restrictor and the drillpipe diverter are convertible to provide a flow path from the wellbore through the auto-fill float equipment to a top surface while blocking flow through the diverter.Filed by FRANK'S INTERNATIONAL, LLC, published 2021-10-14.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20170226813A1 | Control of Hydraulic Power Flowrate for Managed Pressure Drilling | 34 |
| 2 | US20210062635A1 | Automatic Compensation for Surge and Swab During Pipe Movement in Managed Pressure Drilling Operation | 13 |
| 3 | US20220065099A1 | Closed-loop hydraulic drilling | 12 |
| 4 | GB2431942A | Managed pressure drilling | 9 |
| 5 | US8955619B2 | Managed pressure drilling | 7 |
| 6 | EP3892816A1 | Surge reduction system for running liner casing in managed pressure drilling wells | 5 |
| 7 | US11466524B2 | Closed-loop hydraulic drilling | 4 |
| 8 | US20210317711A1 | Surge reduction system for running liner casing in managed pressure drilling wells | 4 |
| 9 | CA2539266A1 | Managed pressure drilling | 4 |
| 10 | US11047224B2 | Automatic compensation for surge and swab during pipe movement in managed pressure drilling operation | 3 |
Citation counts favour older filings that have had more time to accumulate references inside this corpus; treat them as a measure of influence on later filers, not of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Four read-outs from the trend, citation and classification data, aimed at where to file and what to expect from prior art.
The wave has already broken
Filings climbed steadily to 11 in 2021 then dropped to 4 by 2022, and later years show no recovery even allowing for publication lag. New entrants should expect a maturing, not expanding, prior-art base in core MPD control claims.
Influence sits with a handful of early filings
The most-cited record in the set (hydraulic power flowrate control) carries 34 citations, roughly triple the next-highest entry. Later filers are building on a small set of foundational control patents rather than a broad base.
Automation logic dominates, hardware barely appears
Only one record classifies outside E21B, in F16K valve hardware. Claim drafting in this space is almost entirely about control methods and system architecture rather than the physical valves and actuators that execute them.
US-centred, with steady Canada and Europe coverage
The United States receives the largest share of filings, with Canada and Europe each holding a meaningful secondary position and Australia, PCT and the UK trailing. Applicants are prioritising North American and European coverage over broader PCT-only strategies.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to managed pressure drilling process automation, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| TILTON FREDERICK T | SMITH KEVIN W | 1 |
| TILTON FREDERICK T | SKINNER GRAHAM | 1 |
| TILTON FREDERICK T | ROOYAKKERS ROY W | 1 |
| TILTON FREDERICK T | HAUGEN DAVID M | 1 |
| TILTON FREDERICK T | FULLER TOM | 1 |
| TILTON FREDERICK T | BRUNNERT DAVID J | 1 |
| TILTON FREDERICK T | BANSAL RAM K | 1 |
| TILTON FREDERICK T | BAILEY THOMAS F | 1 |
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear across 45 families, and the strongest links (Tilton with Smith, Skinner and Rooyakkers) each occur once — this looks like shared inventorship within a single organisation rather than cross-company collaboration.
Who holds the ground, and where it is open
Recent-year momentum has gone quiet across every tracked assignee, which changes how a new entrant should read the ownership picture below.
No one is currently filing
Halliburton, Weatherford entities, Frank's International, Ameriforge and Grant Prideco all show zero filings in the latest tracked year. This is consistent with the post-2021 decline in the overall trend rather than any single company exiting the space.
Ownership is spread across oilfield service majors
The assignee list is dominated by established oilfield service and equipment companies rather than startups, consistent with a technology that requires rig-scale hardware integration to reduce to practice.
Collaboration is thin and inventor-linked
With only 10 co-assignee pairings across the dataset and the strongest links appearing once each, cross-company joint filing has not been a meaningful strategy here — most families are filed by a single assignee.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Weatherford Technology Holdings, LLC | 0 | — |
| FRANKS INT | 0 | — |
| Weatherford Lamb, Inc. | 0 | — |
| AMERIFORGE GRP | 0 | — |
| Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. (US) | 0 | — |
| Grant Prideco, Inc. | 0 | — |
| TILTON FREDERICK T | 0 | — |
| SMITH KEVIN W | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The trend and ownership data point to specific next steps depending on whether you are clearing a product or scouting a filing gap.
Map claims against the E21B/F16K boundary
Since automation logic (E21B) and actuation hardware (F16K) are claimed almost separately in this set, a freedom-to-operate check should treat them as two distinct clearance exercises rather than one.
Explore claim mapping in EurekaRe-run the trend once 2025–2026 filings publish
Given the 18-month publication lag, the apparent post-2021 decline should be re-checked in a future run before treating it as confirmed rather than an artefact of pending applications.
Track this landscape in EurekaTest candidate claims against the top-cited prior art
The five most-cited records concentrate a large share of the field's influence; drafting around or building on them directly is likely more efficient than searching broadly across all 45 families.
Run a citation check in EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
Filing activity peaked in 2021 at 11 families and had fallen to 4 by 2022, with no tracked assignee showing filings in the most recent year. That said, publication lags filing by around 18 months, so 2025 and 2026 figures are understated and the picture could look different once those applications publish. Overall the data supports treating this as a maturing rather than expanding filing area for now.
Ownership is concentrated among established oilfield service and equipment companies rather than startups, including Halliburton, Weatherford-linked entities, Frank's International, Ameriforge and Grant Prideco. None of these assignees shows filing activity in the latest tracked year, which suggests the ownership map reflects legacy positioning built up through the mid-2010s to early 2020s rather than current-day activity. A freedom-to-operate search should still cover these names first given their historical volume.
44 of the 45 records in this dataset classify under E21B (earth and rock drilling for wells), with only one touching F16K (valves and taps). That imbalance means the crowded claim territory is drilling-process control logic and system architecture, not the physical valve or actuator hardware that implements the control. Anyone drafting hardware-specific claims around surge/swab compensation or choke actuation may find comparatively less direct prior art to clear than someone drafting control-method claims.
Citation counts in a search corpus like this one naturally favour older filings, since they have had more years for later applicants to cite them. The top-cited record here, on hydraulic power flowrate control, carries 34 citations versus roughly a third of that for the next entry, which signals foundational influence rather than current commercial dominance. Use these counts to identify patents worth reading closely, not as a ranking of what is most valuable to license or design around today.
The clearest gap sits at the boundary the data itself highlights: only one record in the entire set covers valve hardware (F16K) against 44 covering drilling-process control (E21B). Specific sub-areas that look under-claimed include closed-loop choke valve actuation, autonomous kick-detection algorithms, and real-time hydraulic model calibration tied to sensor fusion. A first claim in these areas would need to tie a specific hardware mechanism to a closed-loop control step to sit outside the dense E21B control-method art.
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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.