The oil & gas industry has become a high-tech field, as companies invest heavily in developing sophisticated, innovative, and safe ways to find and extract oil and gas from ever more remote, deep, and costly places. With global demand for oil growing by 1 to 2% a year and oil prices remaining high, demand for these technologies will continue to grow.

In order to turn their R&D investments into revenue-generating assets, oil and gas companies are increasingly seeking patent protection. The number of patents related to extractive industries more than doubled from 2005 to 2010.

Decades of Oil & Gas Experience

Since our founding in 1996, we have prepared and prosecuted thousands of patents for oil & gas companies, from big players such as Weatherford International and ExxonMobil, to midsized and smaller companies such as Borets, Wison Offshore & Marine, Wild Well Control, and GeoDynamics.

Our engineers-turned-attorneys have secured patents for numerous down-hole and above-hole innovations, including:

  • Drill bits
  • Submersible pumps
  • Completion systems
  • Tubular-running services
  • Acoustic telemetry equipment
  • Fiber optics
  • Pipelines
  • Jet drilling technology
  • Perforating equipment

Long-Term Partnerships

Due to our long-term relationships with several oil & gas clients (our partnership with Weatherford spans more than a decade), our attorneys have many years of experience and deep expertise in oil & gas technologies and mechanical systems. With backgrounds in mechanical and chemical engineering, as well as materials science, our attorneys can speak our clients’ language and quickly understand their inventions.

From our headquarters in Houston, Texas, we regularly visit our clients’ R&D facilities and oil fields to get a first-hand look at their inventions. We pride ourselves on our personal relationships with our clients’ engineers and inventors, who trust us to fully protect their ideas and inventions in this rapidly growing field.


Related Team:

David Y. Ashton

Associate

Orson Bell

Associate

Jordan Brown

Associate

Grant Buchanan, Ph.D.

Associate

Kyrie Cameron

Partner

John-Paul F. Cherry, Ph.D.

Patent Agent

Grant Davis

Associate

Craig Depew

Senior Counsel

Chad Dougherty

Partner

Shuya Duan

Associate

Austin Gray

Associate

Simon J Harrall

Associate

Payton Hashemi

Of Counsel

Michael Henn

Associate

Jessie D. Herrera, Jr.

Partner

Jason C. Huang

Partner

Thomas D. Kiselak

Associate

J. Mitchell Lowe

Associate

Daniel McGovern

Associate

Josh Monaghan

Counsel

Neil Morrissette

Of Counsel

B. Todd Patterson

Practice Head, Managing Partner

W. Bruce Patterson

Partner, Practice Head

Aaron Perkins

Associate

Randol Read

Partner

Steven E. Roberts

Partner

Chance Siller

Associate

Reese Sloan

Technical Advisor

Charles E. Smith

Of Counsel

Nicholas Smith, Ph.D.

Partner

Adam Treiber

Of Counsel

Jay Yates

Partner

Valerie Yu

Associate

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