Patent 11641661

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 (2)

Asserters network →

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

  1. 2021-05-06 · reel 056461/805 · Assignment

    CHENG, CHIEN-CHUN; CHENG, YU-HSIN; LIN, WAN-CHEN; TSAI, TSUNG-HUAFG Innovation Company Limited

    Correspondent: FG INNOVATION COMPANY LTD.

    acquisition

  2. 2021-09-15 · reel 057038/034 · Assignment

    FG Innovation Company LimitedHANNIBAL IP LLC

    Correspondent: FG INNOVATION COMPANY LTD.

    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

  • Chien-Chun Cheng (employer unknown)
  • Tsung-Hua Tsai (employer unknown)
  • Yu-Hsin Cheng (employer unknown)
  • Wan-Chen Lin (employer unknown)

Employer at the time of filing is not determinable from the provided patent text.

Original assignee

The original assignee listed on the issued patent US11641661B2 is Hannibal IP LLC. It is unclear if Hannibal IP LLC ships a product embodying the claims. Based on the name and the subsequent assignment patterns, Hannibal IP LLC appears to be a licensing or holding company rather than an operating company. Its current status is active, as indicated by the Google Patents legal status.

Assignment timeline

  • 2021-05-06 (executed) / recorded 2021-05-06 — Reel 056461/805

    • Conveyance: Assignment
    • Assignor: CHENG, CHIEN-CHUN; CHENG, YU-HSIN; LIN, WAN-CHEN; TSAI, TSUNG-HUA
    • Assignee: FG Innovation Company Limited
    • Correspondent: FG INNOVATION COMPANY LTD., 3333 Preston Road, Suite 300, Frisco, Texas 75034. This correspondent appears multiple times in this chain.
    • Context: Inventors assigning rights to a corporate entity.

  • 2021-09-15 (executed) / recorded 2021-09-15 — Reel 057038/034

    • Conveyance: Assignment
    • Assignor: FG INNOVATION COMPANY LTD.
    • Assignee: HANNIBAL IP LLC
    • Correspondent: FG INNOVATION COMPANY LTD., 3333 Preston Road, Suite 300, Frisco, Texas 75034. This correspondent appears multiple times in this chain.
    • Context: Transfer from one corporate entity to another, likely a patent holding company.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11641661
    2018 : Priority date
    2021 : Inventors assign to FG Innovation
    2021 : FG Innovation assigns to Hannibal IP LLC
    2023 : Patent issued

NPE / troll-pattern signals

  1. Shell-entity transfer — present. The transfer from FG Innovation Company Limited to Hannibal IP LLC (recorded 2021-09-15, reel 057038/034) suggests this. Hannibal IP LLC's name with "IP" and the current legal status indicating active litigation (IPR2025-01190 and US case in Texas Eastern District Court) without an apparent product line, points towards a licensing-focused entity.

  2. Known asserter in the chain — present. Hannibal IP LLC is identified as the current assignee. Unified Patents lists "Hannibal IP LLC" as a litigant.

  3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — present. The correspondent "FG INNOVATION COMPANY LTD., 3333 Preston Road, Suite 300, Frisco, Texas 75034" handled both the assignment from the inventors to FG Innovation (recorded 2021-05-06, reel 056461/805) and the subsequent assignment from FG Innovation to Hannibal IP LLC (recorded 2021-09-15, reel 057038/034). This recurrence with a corporate entity acting as correspondent for multiple transfers in the chain is a strong signal.

  4. Cascading transfers — not present. There are two transfers within approximately 4 months, but not multiple consecutive assignments through chained LLCs within a very short period that would suggest a rapid cascade.

  5. Pre-litigation transfer — unclear. The patent was granted on 2023-05-02. While litigation was filed in 2025, the assignments occurred prior to issuance and well before the known litigation, so a direct "pre-litigation transfer" signal as defined (within 6 months before the first suit naming this patent) is not present. However, the transfers occurred before the patent issued, which could be indicative of preparing for future assertion.

  6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No indication of bankruptcy from the original assignee or assignors.

  7. Privateering — unclear. While the pattern aligns with an operating company (FG Innovation Company Limited) transferring to an NPE (Hannibal IP LLC), there's no explicit evidence from SEC filings or other public disclosures that FG Innovation is an operating company actively competing in a market related to the patent and using Hannibal IP LLC to assert on its behalf.

  8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The chain does not terminate at a known defensive aggregator.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence. The presence of multiple strong signals supports this verdict. The transfer to Hannibal IP LLC, a known litigant according to Unified Patents, combined with the repeat correspondent "FG INNOVATION COMPANY LTD." handling multiple assignments in the chain, indicates a pattern consistent with patent assertion entities. Furthermore, the "IP" in "Hannibal IP LLC" is a common suffix for licensing-focused entities.

USPTO Assignment Center Search for US11641661

Generated 5/21/2026, 6:46:02 AM