Patent 10059341

Assignment history

Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.

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Ownership chain (1)

Asserters network →

Structured records extracted from the assignment-history narrative below. Each entity links to its full ownership-network profile.

  1. 2016-06-17 · reel 038945/0365 · Assignment

    SHARP, JEREMY; GOLI, SUMAN; RETTIG, MARKCATERPILLAR INC.

    Original assignment from inventors to employer

Assignment history

Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.

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Inventors

  • Jeremy Sharp (Caterpillar Inc.)
  • Suman Goli (Caterpillar Inc.)
  • Mark Rettig (Caterpillar Inc.)

Original assignee

The original assignee, Caterpillar Inc., is a multinational corporation that designs, develops, engineers, manufactures, markets, and sells machinery, engines, financial products, and insurance to customers via a worldwide dealer network. They ship products embodying the claims, specifically heavy equipment like wheel loaders that would incorporate such control systems for fuel efficiency. Caterpillar Inc. is currently operating.

Assignment timeline

An assignment was recorded for US Patent 10,059,341.

  • 2016-06-17 (executed) / recorded 2016-06-17 — Reel 038945/0365
    • Conveyance: Assignment
    • Assignor: SHARP, JEREMY; GOLI, SUMAN; RETTIG, MARK (the inventors)
    • Assignee: CATERPILLAR INC., ILLINOIS
    • Correspondent: NOT PROVIDED
    • Context: Original assignment from inventors to employer.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10059341
    2016 : Filed by Caterpillar Inc.
         : Inventors assigned to Caterpillar
    2018 : Issued

NPE / troll-pattern signals

  1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. The sole recorded assignment is from the individual inventors to Caterpillar Inc., an operating company.
  2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. Caterpillar Inc. is not a known NPE.
  3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — not present. The original assignment document does not specify a correspondent, and there are no other assignments in the chain.
  4. Cascading transfers — not present. There is only one recorded assignment in the chain.
  5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. There are no records of infringement suits for this patent in the CAFC dockets as of April 26, 2026, and no transfers within 6 months of any potential litigation.
  6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. Caterpillar Inc. is an active, operating company.
  7. Privateering — not present. There is no indication of Caterpillar Inc. transferring the patent to an NPE to assert on its behalf.
  8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The patent is currently assigned to Caterpillar Inc.

Verdict

Insufficient data. The only recorded assignment is the initial transfer from the inventors to Caterpillar Inc., the original operating assignee. There are no subsequent assignments to suggest any NPE activity.

USPTO Assignment Center search page: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/

Generated 5/27/2026, 12:45:33 PM