Assignment history

Inventors

• Yunfei Zheng
• Qian Xu
• Xiaoan Lu
• Peng Yin
• Joel Sole Rojals
• Adeel Abbas

No information is available regarding their employers at the time of filing within the patent document. There is no information to determine if unusual patterns of inventors departing the original assignee occurred.

Original assignee

The original assignee is InterDigital VC Holdings Inc.

Based on publicly available information, InterDigital, Inc. (the parent company of InterDigital VC Holdings Inc.) is an operating company involved in research and development, and licensing of wireless and video technologies. It is not clear from the patent text or readily available public information whether InterDigital VC Holdings Inc. specifically shipped a product embodying the claims of US11936876B2. The current status of InterDigital VC Holdings Inc. is operating, as it is listed as the current assignee.

Assignment timeline

• 2025-08-08 (executed) / recorded 2025-08-08 — Reel 064299/0410

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors Interest
  • Assignor: THOMSON LICENSING
  • Assignee: INTERDIGITAL VC HOLDINGS, INC.
  • Correspondent: BLAIR W. CHEN, INTERDIGITAL, 200 DELAWARE AVENUE, 11TH FLOOR, WILMINGTON, DE 19801. This correspondent has not recurred in the provided patent information.
  • Context: Reassignment of interest.

• 2025-08-08 (executed) / recorded 2025-08-08 — Reel 064299/0409

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors Interest
  • Assignor: XU, QIAN; ABBAS, ADEEL; LU, XIAOAN; SOLE, JOEL; YIN, PENG; ZHENG, YUNFEI
  • Assignee: THOMSON LICENSING
  • Correspondent: BLAIR W. CHEN, INTERDIGITAL, 200 DELAWARE AVENUE, 11TH FLOOR, WILMINGTON, DE 19801. This correspondent has not recurred in the provided patent information.
  • Context: Assignment of inventor interest.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11936876
    2021 : Application filed by InterDigital VC Holdings Inc
    2024 : Issued to InterDigital VC Holdings Inc
    2025 : Assigned from Inventors to Thomson Licensing
         : Assigned from Thomson Licensing to InterDigital VC Holdings Inc

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — unclear. The transfers involve Thomson Licensing and InterDigital VC Holdings Inc. InterDigital is a known operating company, but the specific role of "VC Holdings Inc." and "Thomson Licensing" in product commercialization versus licensing-only activities is not fully clear from the provided patent information alone.
2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. Neither Thomson Licensing nor InterDigital VC Holdings Inc. are listed as known NPEs in the common directories.
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — not present. The correspondent, Blair W. Chen, appears twice in the assignment record, both for transfers recorded on 2025-08-08, but these are consecutive steps in the same chain of assignment of inventor interests to the ultimate assignee. This does not indicate a recurring pattern across unrelated chains or a flag for NPE activities in the given context.
4. Cascading transfers — not present. The two assignments are recorded on the same date and relate to the transfer of inventor interests to an operating company, not multiple consecutive transfers through chained LLCs to unknown entities.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — unclear. The patent was granted on 2024-03-19, and the assignments occurred on 2025-08-08. There is a PTAB case IPR2026-00193 filed, which is pending. Without knowing the exact filing date of any infringement suits, it is unclear if these assignments occurred within 6 months prior to litigation.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. There is no indication of bankruptcy proceedings for the assignors.
7. Privateering — unclear. No SEC filings or other public coverage indicating privateering is available in the provided text.
8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The chain does not terminate at a known defensive aggregator.

Verdict

Insufficient data. The available assignment records (Reel 064299/0409 and 064299/0410, both recorded 2025-08-08) show a transfer of inventor interests to Thomson Licensing and subsequently to InterDigital VC Holdings Inc., which is the original assignee on the patent. While there's an IPR pending (IPR2026-00193), there's no clear evidence of product commercialization by the ultimate assignee or any other strong NPE signals like shell-entity transfers or repeat NPE correspondents. More information would be needed to definitively determine an NPE pattern.

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