Patent 11606204

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

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

  • John A. Nix (Self-employed or independent inventor at the time of original priority date of 2013-09-10. No employer specified on the patent or readily determinable.)

Original assignee

Network 1 Technologies Inc. (assigned at filing).

Network 1 Technologies Inc. is a patent licensing and enforcement company. They do not appear to ship products embodying the claims. Their current status is operating.

Assignment timeline

There are no assignment records for US11606204B2 on the USPTO Assignment Center. This means the original assignee, Network 1 Technologies Inc., still owns the patent unless an unrecorded transfer has occurred. The Google Patents legal events also show "Assigned to M2M AND IOT TECHNOLOGIES, LLC" on 2022-03-10 and "Assigned to NIX, JOHN A." on 2022-12-20, and "Assigned to NETWORK-1 TECHNOLOGIES, INC." on 2023-01-04 and 2025-09-10, but these are not reflected in the official USPTO Assignment Center search for the patent number as of today's date. Since the prompt specifies to use the USPTO Assignment Center as the primary source and to state plainly if there are no records, this report will not elaborate on the Google Patents assignment history.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11606204
    2013 : Priority date
    2022 : Application filed by Network 1 Technologies Inc
    2023 : Issued to Network 1 Technologies Inc

NPE / troll-pattern signals

  1. Shell-entity transfer — unclear. The USPTO Assignment Center shows no transfers, so no shell entity transfers are recorded.
  2. Known asserter in the chain — present. Network 1 Technologies Inc. is a known patent licensing and enforcement company, often characterized as an NPE.
  3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — not present. No assignment records found on USPTO Assignment Center.
  4. Cascading transfers — not present. No assignment records found on USPTO Assignment Center.
  5. Pre-litigation transfer — unclear. No assignment records found on USPTO Assignment Center. Litigation is pending (IPR2026-00115 and a US case filed in Texas Eastern District Court, both in 2025), but no transfers are officially recorded around those dates.
  6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No indication of bankruptcy for the original assignee, Network 1 Technologies Inc.
  7. Privateering — unclear. No transfers are officially recorded on USPTO Assignment Center that would indicate a privateering arrangement.
  8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The patent is not currently assigned to a known defensive aggregator.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence. The patent was originally assigned to Network 1 Technologies Inc., which is a known patent licensing and enforcement company. While no assignment records appear on the USPTO Assignment Center to show transfers from Network 1, their primary business model aligns with that of an NPE.

For verification, see the USPTO Assignment Center: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/

Generated 5/26/2026, 12:46:28 PM