Petroleum Geo-Services (PGS) and Electromagnetic Geoservices (EMGS) have entered into a settlement agreement that will resolve their dispute of patents for offshore electromagnetic (EM) and seismic survey technologies.
The patents being disputed were EMGS’ refracted wave patent, which was patented in parallel in the EU and in Norway; and PGS’ US patent of ‘Detection of Subsurface Resistivity Contrasts with Application to Location of Fluids’.
The settlement agreement grants both companies licenses to operate the respective patents that were previously in dispute. The licenses are royalty-free and valid worldwide while the patents remain valid.
EMGS first filed a complaint against PGS in a UK patents court in December 2013, alleging that PGS had infringed its European refracted wave patent. EMGS filed a parallel proceeding in Oslo during April 2014, which alleged that PGS’ towed streamer EM technology infringed EMGS’s parallel Norwegian patent.
PGS responded by filing its own complaint against EGS almost a year later in the US District Court for the District of Delaware. In its complaint, PGS said EMGS had breached its US patent by way of its survey activities in the Gulf of Mexico and on the US outer-continental shelf, deals with US customers and imports of certain data products into the US.
