Patent 10469980

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.

Active provider: Google · gemini-2.5-flash

Ownership chain (1)

Asserters network →

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

  1. 2022-05-16 · Reassignment

    EMPIRE IP LLCNEARBY SYSTEMS LLC

    transfer-to-asserter

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.

✓ Generated

Inventors

  • Gabriel Jakobson (Employer at time of filing: Unknown)
  • Steven L. Rueben (Employer at time of filing: Unknown)

Original assignee

The original assignee, Empire IP LLC, is likely a non-practicing entity (NPE). Their primary line of business is not determinable from the patent text, and there is no indication they ever shipped a product embodying the claims. Their current status is "Assignor" in the most recent assignment, indicating they transferred the patent.

Assignment timeline

There are no assignment records for US10469980B2 in the USPTO Assignment Center search.

The Google Patents page for US10469980B2 lists one assignment event:

  • 2022-05-16 (executed) / recorded Unknown
    • Conveyance: Reassignment
    • Assignor: Empire IP LLC
    • Assignee: NEARBY SYSTEMS LLC
    • Correspondent: Unknown
    • Context: transfer-to-asserter

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10469980
    2016 : Filed by Empire IP LLC
    2019 : Issued
    2022 : Assigned to Nearby Systems LLC

NPE / troll-pattern signals

  1. Shell-entity transfer — present. The original assignee, Empire IP LLC, and the current assignee, Nearby Systems LLC, both have names suggestive of licensing-only entities ("IP LLC" and "Systems LLC"). Google Patents indicates a reassignment from Empire IP LLC to Nearby Systems LLC. [cite: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10469980](/patent/US10469980)/en]

  2. Known asserter in the chain — unclear. While the assignees appear to be shell entities, they do not directly match a publicly available list of high-frequency NPE plaintiffs (e.g., Acacia Research Corp, Marathon Patent Group) without further investigation.

  3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — not present. No correspondent information is available for the assignment found on Google Patents.

  4. Cascading transfers — not present. Only one assignment is listed between the original assignee and the current assignee.

  5. Pre-litigation transfer — unclear. Google Patents indicates that litigation related to this patent family was filed in the Texas Eastern District Court, with cases like "2:23-cv-00384" starting in 2023. The assignment date is May 16, 2022, which is less than 12 months, but more than 6 months, before the earliest listed litigation. Without more precise litigation filing dates, it is difficult to determine if this was a pre-litigation transfer within the 6-month window. [cite: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10469980](/patent/US10469980)/en]

  6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No information suggests the original assignee filed for bankruptcy.

  7. Privateering — not present. There is no information in the provided text or Google Patents to suggest privateering.

  8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The chain ends at Nearby Systems LLC, which is not a known defensive aggregator.

Verdict

NPE — moderate confidence. The transfer from Empire IP LLC to Nearby Systems LLC, both of which appear to be shell entities based on their names, strongly suggests an NPE pattern. The existence of multiple litigations in the Texas Eastern District Court further supports this. The lack of detailed correspondent information and specific product offerings prevents a "high confidence" rating. The assignment is visible on Google Patents, linked from the patent details page.

Generated 5/20/2026, 12:45:44 PM