Scientific Drilling International, Inc.

Scientific Drilling International, Inc., often referred to as SDI, is an independent global provider of directional drilling and wellbore navigation, surveying, and logging services. Headquartered in Houston, Texas, the company was founded in 1969. Scientific Drilling International is a privately held company with approximately 1,200 employees as of 2024.

SDI provides comprehensive wellbore navigation solutions and services to the oil and gas, geothermal, and mining industries worldwide. Their offerings include High Accuracy Gyro Survey, Measurement While Drilling (MWD), Logging While Drilling (LWD), MagTraC MWD Ranging™, and Cased Hole Solutions. The company designs, engineers, and manufactures its own directional drilling technology products, including electronic sensors for downhole measurements, borehole surveying instruments, MWD/LWD systems, rotary steerable technologies, and innovative drill motor designs.

As an operating company, Scientific Drilling International holds an active patent portfolio, which it appears to assert. The company's patent litigation posture, based on available data, shows one tracked case where it is the plaintiff and zero cases as a defendant. This indicates a strategy of asserting its intellectual property rather than primarily defending against infringement claims.

The single tracked case for Scientific Drilling International, Inc. is a plaintiff-side action, Scientific Drilling International, Inc. v. Gunnar Lllp, filed on August 19, 2025, before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). This PTAB proceeding suggests the company is challenging the validity of a competitor's patent.