Forum Energy Enters Inventorship Fight Over Oilfield Equipment

A Forum Energy Technologies Inc. unit told a Texas federal judge a TechnipFMC PLC subsidiary isn’t the rightful owner nor sole inventor of an oilfield hydraulic fracturing system patent.

Forum USA Inc alleged it should have ownership rights in US Patent No. 11,754,060—which is at the heart of an inventor’s breach-of-contract lawsuit against FMC Technologies Inc.—in a complaint-in-intervention filed Monday in the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas.

Forum said FMC wrongly refused to name Bill Bridges as a co-inventor of the ‘060 patent during the application process. The company seeks a correction of the patent’s ...