Halliburton takes fracking fight to patent office

Bloomberg

Halliburton Co. isn’t content to limit its battle for market share with Schlumberger Ltd. to the oil field these days. It’s opened a new front in an unlikely place: the patent office.
The Houston-based provider of drilling services is waging an aggressive campaign to persuade the US Patent and Trademark Office to cancel some of Schlumberger’s fracking-related patents, telling the agency they’re not inventions but old ideas repackaged.
At the same time, Halliburton is pursuing more patents and was awarded 35 percent more in 2017 compared to the previous year.
“They’re the two big dogs in the space,” said J. David Anderson, an analyst at Barclays. “Halliburton and Schlumberger have been battling for that top spot in North American services for a decade, so the fact they’re going after each other with patents is not surprising.”
Halliburton has long been the top North American contractor while Schlumberger has dominated international markets, but they’ve been increasingly encroaching on each other’s turf as crude recovers from its worst crash in a generation.
In North America, Schlumberger is directly challenging Halliburton’s title as the top fracker after recently acquiring roughly 1 million horsepower-worth of rock-crushing pumps from Weatherford International Plc. Meanwhile, Halliburton grew at a faster pace in all international markets than Schlumberger in the final three months of last year.
Fracking, also known as hydraulic fracturing, blasts water, sand and chemicals underground to release trapped oil and gas.