Assignment history

Inventors

• Paulos Tesfe (Leprino Foods Co)
• Jiancai Li (Leprino Foods Co)
• Bradley Maier (Leprino Foods Co)
• Richard K. Merrill (Leprino Foods Co)

All inventors were employees of Leprino Foods Co. at the time of filing, as indicated by the immediate assignment to the company on the filing date. No unusual patterns are observed.

Original assignee

The entity named on the issued patent is Leprino Foods Co. Leprino Foods Co. is a privately held dairy company, primarily known as a major producer of mozzarella cheese and other dairy ingredients. The patented technology relates to denatured milk proteins, which aligns with their core business of dairy processing and ingredient production. Leprino Foods Co. is currently an operating company.

Assignment timeline

• 2023-01-13 (executed) / recorded 2023-01-13 — Reel 006404/0616
  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: LI, JIANCAI; MAIER, BRADLEY; MERRILL, RICHARD K.; TESFE, PAULOS
  • Assignee: LEPRINO FOODS COMPANY
  • Correspondent: STROOCK & STROOCK & LAVAN LLP; 180 MAIDEN LANE, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10038
  • Context: Original assignment from inventors to the employer on the filing date.

The USPTO Assignment Center shows no further recorded assignments for US11825860.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11825860
    2023 : Filed and assigned to Leprino Foods Co by inventors
    2023 : Issued

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. The only assignment is from individual inventors to Leprino Foods Co., a known operating dairy company, on the filing date (Reel 006404/0616, 2023-01-13).
2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. Leprino Foods Co. is an operating company, not a known patent asserter (NPE).
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Not applicable. There is only one assignment recorded for this patent, thus no recurrence of a correspondent in this chain.
4. Cascading transfers — Not present. Only a single assignment from inventors to the operating company is recorded.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. The sole assignment occurred on the patent's filing date (Reel 006404/0616, 2023-01-13), long before any potential litigation would arise. A PTAB IPR case was filed against the patent by Unified Patents in 2025, but this is a challenge, not an assertion by the patent owner.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. Leprino Foods Co. is an active, operating company.
7. Privateering — Not present. The patent remains with the original operating assignee, Leprino Foods Co.
8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The patent is owned by Leprino Foods Co., not a defensive aggregator. Unified Patents is listed as a petitioner challenging the patent in an IPR, which is an anti-NPE action, but they do not own the patent.

Verdict

Insufficient data. Only the initial assignment from the inventors to the original operating company, Leprino Foods Co., is recorded in the USPTO Assignment Center. There are no subsequent assignments to analyze for NPE patterns. This indicates that Leprino Foods Co. still owns the patent.

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