Patent 11096252

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. 2019-11-20 · recorded 2020-01-02 · reel 055835/0628 · ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST

    ALTAMURA, STEVEN J.SEASONAL SPECIALTIES, LLC

    Correspondent: Jeffrey M. Lilly · DUGAN & DUGAN

    acquisition

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

Steven J. Altamura: Employed by Seasonal Specialties, LLC at the time of filing. The patent application was filed on November 25, 2019, and the inventor's interest was assigned to Seasonal Specialties, LLC on November 20, 2019, and recorded on January 2, 2020. There are no unusual patterns indicating inventors departing the original assignee shortly after filing.

Original Assignee

Seasonal Specialties, LLC: This entity is named as the original assignee on the issued patent.

  • Products: Seasonal Specialties, LLC ships products embodying the claims, including "mini-bulb lighting strings used for Christmas and other holiday decorative lighting, rope lights (also known as flexible lighting) and other general lighting applications that use series connected lamps or LEDs" (Description, Col. 7, lines 34-40).
  • Primary Line of Business: Decorative and general lighting products, particularly focused on holiday and seasonal lighting.
  • Current Status: Operating. Google Patents lists the legal status as "Active, expires 2028-01-28" and Seasonal Specialties, LLC as the Current Assignee.

Assignment timeline

  • 2019-11-20 (executed) / recorded 2020-01-02 — Reel 055835/0628
    • Conveyance: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST
    • Assignor: ALTAMURA, STEVEN J.
    • Assignee: SEASONAL SPECIALTIES, LLC
    • Correspondent: Jeffrey M. Lilly, DUGAN & DUGAN, PC, 245 BROADWAY, SUITE 2, NEW YORK, NY, 10007.
    • Context: Inventor assigned patent rights to their employer/operating company.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11096252
    2019 : Inventor assigns to Seasonal Specialties, LLC
    2019 : Application filed
    2021 : Patent Issued

NPE / troll-pattern signals

  1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. The only transfer recorded is from the individual inventor (Steven J. Altamura) to an operating company (Seasonal Specialties, LLC) via Reel 055835/0628 on 2020-01-02. Seasonal Specialties, LLC is an active operating company that ships products.

  2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. Seasonal Specialties, LLC is an operating company, not a known NPE from the provided lists. While they are a plaintiff in a District Court case (2:23-cv-06318), this appears to be an assertion by an operating company, not a typical NPE. Unified Patents, which initiated the IPR (IPR2024-01258), is an anti-NPE organization.

  3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Not present. There is only one assignment recorded for this patent (Reel 055835/0628), so a recurrence of a correspondent across multiple links in the chain cannot be observed. The correspondent for this assignment is Jeffrey M. Lilly of DUGAN & DUGAN, PC.

  4. Cascading transfers — Not present. Only a single assignment from the inventor to the assignee is recorded (Reel 055835/0628).

  5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. The assignment from the inventor to Seasonal Specialties, LLC was executed on 2019-11-20 and recorded on 2020-01-02 (Reel 055835/0628). The district court litigation (2:23-cv-06318) was filed in 2023, well beyond the 6-month pre-litigation window.

  6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. There is no indication that Seasonal Specialties, LLC has undergone bankruptcy proceedings or that the patent was acquired through such a sale.

  7. Privateering — Not present. There is no publicly available information or SEC filings indicating a privateering arrangement where Seasonal Specialties, LLC transferred the patent to an NPE to assert on its behalf.

  8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present in the ownership chain. The patent is currently owned by Seasonal Specialties, LLC. However, an Inter Partes Review (IPR2024-01258) has been filed by Unified Patents, LLC, which is a known defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) organization challenging the patent's validity.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion. The patent is owned by Seasonal Specialties, LLC, which is an operating company that manufactures and sells lighting products embodying the claimed invention. The sole recorded assignment is from the inventor to this operating company. While there is identified litigation (District Court case 2:23-cv-06318), it appears to be an assertion by an operating company, not an NPE, and an IPR (IPR2024-01258) was filed by an anti-NPE entity.

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

Generated 5/31/2026, 6:46:11 PM