The following section focuses on shale oil and gas patents filed with CIPO. In total, 284 patents were included in the analysis. To generate the dataset for this analysis, a query similar to the one used in Thomson Innovation was employed; however, in this case it was done in CIPO's patents database and included bilingual terms.
| Number of patents | 284 |
|---|---|
| Priority year range | 2000 to 2012 |
| Applicants | 158 |
| Priority countries | 12 |
The trend in shale oil and gas patent applications filed with CIPO, shown in Figure 16, is similar to those seen previously. That is, it shows one of significant growth, but on a much smaller scale. Overall, the number of patents in the Canadian dataset by priority year has been increasing since 2000. The high degree of variation from year to year is likely due to the small sample size. With respect to how filings are made in Canada, 74% of patents are filed through the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). This is in line with the ratio of PCT found in total filings with CIPO. We also found that 75% of applications in Canada were filed first in the USA, 5% in China, and a further 5% in Japan.
| Priority year | Filings |
|---|---|
| 2000 | 15 |
| 2001 | 14 |
| 2002 | 15 |
| 2003 | 22 |
| 2004 | 27 |
| 2005 | 15 |
| 2006 | 20 |
| 2007 | 36 |
| 2008 | 29 |
| 2009 | 28 |
| 2010 | 35 |
| 2011 | 21 |
| 2012 | 4 |
The top applicant for filings related to shale oil and gas is Halliburton Energy Service Inc. Exxon Mobile Corp. is second, with approximately half the number of filings of the top applicant. Of note is that Chinese and Japanese companies are not major filers in Canada, while American companies are.
Figure 17: Top applicants at CIPO
Description of Figure 17
| Assignee/Applicant | Number of Records |
|---|---|
| Halliburton Energy Services Inc. | 43 |
| Exxon Mobil Corportation | 23 |
| M-I L.L.C. | 16 |
| Schlumberger Canada Limited | 7 |
| ENI S.P.A. | 6 |
| Kellogg Brown & Root LLC | 6 |
| Red Leaf Resources, Inc. | 5 |
| Baker Hughes Incorporated | 4 |
| Clearwater International, L.L.C. | 4 |
| Headwaters Heavy Oil, LLC | 4 |
| Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation | 4 |
| JGC Corporation | 4 |
| Saudi Arabian Oil Company | 4 |
| Shell Internationale Research Maatschappij B.V. | 4 |
| Axens | 3 |
| JX Nippon Oil & Energy Corporation | 3 |
| Outotec Oyj | 3 |
| Total Raffinage Marketing | 3 |
| BASF SE | 2 |
| Beijing Grand Golden-Bright Engineering & Technologies Co. Ltd. | 2 |
Figure 17 illustrates a bar chart for the top applicant filings at CIPO.
As depicted in Figure 18, the top three applicants have been actively filing with CIPO since 2000, whereas others are either more selective in the patents they file with CIPO or simply not actively patenting. From the information collected in the worldwide analysis, we know some of these companies are actively patenting, and are simply not filing in Canada.
Figure 18: Top applicant activity at CIPO between 2000 and 2012
Description of Figure 18
| Assignee/Applicant | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. | 1 | 6 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 5 | 4 | 8 | 3 | |||
| Exxon Mobil Corp | 4 | 5 | 4 | 6 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 2 | |||
| M-I L.L.C. | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |
| Schlumberger Canada Limited | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||||||||
| ENI S.P.A. | 3 | 2 | 1 | ||||||||||
| Kellogg Brown & Root LLC | 4 | 2 | |||||||||||
| Red Leaf Resources, Inc. | 1 | 4 | |||||||||||
| Baker Hughes Inc | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | |||||||||
| Clearwater International, L.L.C. | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||||
| Headwaters Heavy Oil, LLC | 4 | ||||||||||||
| Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp | 2 | 1 | |||||||||||
| JGC Corp | 1 | 1 | |||||||||||
| Saudi Arabian Oil Company | 1 | 1 | 2 | ||||||||||
| Shell Internationale Research Maatschappij B.V. | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | |||||||||
| Axens | 3 | ||||||||||||
| JX Nippon Oil & Energy Corp | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||||
| Outotec Oyj | 1 | 2 | |||||||||||
| Total Raffinage Marketing | 3 |
Figure 18 is an applicant timeline for top applicants filings at CIPO. Each year with a filing is represented by a blue square that links the applicant to the year.
Figure 19 indicates the total number of patents by priority year for the top inventors associated with the top applicants at CIPO.
Figure 19: Top 20 inventors filing at CIPO
Description of Figure 19
| Inventors | Number of Records |
|---|---|
| Patel, Arvind D. | 13 |
| Roddy, Craig Wayne | 13 |
| Brenneis, Darrell Chad | 11 |
| Stamatakis, Emanuel | 11 |
| Chatterji, Jiten | 9 |
| Brothers, Lance E. | 7 |
| King, Bobby Joe | 6 |
| Wheeler, Lucie B. | 6 |
| Dana, Todd | 5 |
| Davis, Eric | 5 |
| Patten, James W. | 5 |
| Swan, George Alexander III | 5 |
| Floyd, Raymond | 4 |
| Gatlin, Larry W. | 4 |
| Lee, Lap-Keung | 4 |
| Lott, Roger K. | 4 |
| Siskin, Michael | 4 |
| Subramanian, Anand | 4 |
| Caveny, William J. | 3 |
| Conaway, Lawrence | 3 |
Figure 19 shows a bar chart for the top inventors that file at CIPO.
This patent landscape map is helpful in identifying technological areas where patenting activity is prominent in Canada. It is possible that because most of the world's oil sands reserves are found predominantly in Canada and Venezuela, certain inventions are only worth patenting in these countries since there is not much use for these patents elsewhere. This may also explain why firms filing in the exploration area are more likely to file in Canada than those filing in the development and production areas.
Figure 20: Patent landscape map highlighting the technological areas where patenting activity is prominent in Canada
Description of Figure 20
The figure provides a visual representation of technological areas in the shale oil and gas field where patenting activity is prominent in Canada. Thomson Innovation's ThemeScape mapping tool was utilized for this purpose. ThemeScape uses term frequency (keywords from patent filings' title and abstract) and other algorithms to cluster documents based on shared language. Snow-capped peaks represent the highest concentration of patents with the following keywords: “Hydrotreating”, “Catalyst”, “Peak”, “Slag”, “Fly Ash”, “Ash”, “Bottom”, “Heater” and “Circulation.”
The key words found in this patent landscape map include:
- Pump Distributor Grid
- Guard Bed
- Hexacarbonyl Vanadium
- Hydroconversion
- Tion
- Reactor
- Tower
- Tower Bottoms
- Critical Temperature
- Hydroconversion
- L'une Précédentes
- L'étape
- Bottom
- Feed
- Catalyst
- Hydrotreating
- Catalyst
- Peak
- Précédente Augmenter
- Grades
- Regenerated
- Permeable Body
- Infrastructure Defines Substantially
- Body Void Space
- Matière
- Granulated Inorganic
- Particulaire
- Combustion
- Gas Retort
- Vertical
- Subterranean Formation
- Acrylamide
- Permeability
- Copolymer
- Unsaturated
- Waterbased
- Slag
- Fly Ash
- Ash
- Exiting
- Cyclone Separator
- Spent
- Diamètre
- Hematite Limenite Manganese
- Pounds Gallon
- Forage
- Rheology
- Well Bore
- Bottom
- Heater
- Circulation
- Inhibitor
- Anionic
- Waterbased Wellbore
- Release Valve
- Aliphatics
- Reactor
- Mhz
- Permeability
- Set
- Amine
- Scavengers
- Permeable Rock
- D'inhibition
- Calcite Hematite Iron
- Consisting Barite Calcite
- Mhz
- Black
- Variable