Patent 12037004

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

Ownership chain (1)

Asserters network →

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

  1. 2023-07-27 · Assignment of Assignor's Interest

    SLINGSHOT IOT LLCGRANITE VEHICLE VENTURES LLC

    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

  • Michael S. Gordon (Employer not determinable from patent text)
  • James R. Kozloski (Employer not determinable from patent text)
  • Ashish Kundu (Employer not determinable from patent text)
  • Peter K. Malkin (Employer not determinable from patent text)
  • Clifford A. Pickover (Employer not determinable from patent text)

No unusual patterns regarding inventor departures are determinable from the provided patent text.

Original assignee

Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC is the original assignee named on the issued patent. There is no information within the patent document to determine if they ship a product embodying the claims or their primary line of business. The current status of Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC is "Active" according to the Google Patents legal status, and they are currently involved in litigation.

Assignment timeline

There are no assignment records for US12037004B2 currently available on the USPTO Assignment Center when searching by patent number. The Google Patents record indicates that the current assignee is Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC, and the original assignee was also Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC. The Google Patents record shows one reassignment event:

  • 2023-07-27 / recorded 2023-07-27 - Reel (not specified)
    • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignor's Interest
    • Assignor: SLINGSHOT IOT LLC
    • Assignee: GRANITE VEHICLE VENTURES LLC
    • Correspondent: Not specified in Google Patents record.
    • Context: Transfer-to-asserter from an entity identified as part of a patent monetization network to an entity that then asserted the patent.

It is important to note that while the Google Patents record indicates this reassignment, the USPTO Assignment Center is the authoritative source for recorded assignments. The absence of a recorded assignment in the USPTO Assignment Center search results for this patent number may indicate the recording has not yet been processed or publicly made available, or there might be an issue with the search query. However, the provided Google Patents information explicitly states an assignment event.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 12037004
    2015 : Priority date (Application 14/865,393)
    2023 : Application filed (US18/222,774)
         : Assigned from Slingshot IOT LLC
         : Assigned to Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC
    2024 : Issued to Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC
         : First infringement suit filed vs Tesla
    2026 : Case transferred to N.D. California

NPE / troll-pattern signals

  1. Shell-entity transfer — Present. The patent was assigned from SLINGSHOT IOT LLC to GRANITE VEHICLE VENTURES LLC on 2023-07-27. Google Patents and other sources explicitly identify Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC as a non-practicing entity (NPE) asserting patent rights in vehicle automation technology. Additionally, "Ventures LLC" in the name is a common suffix for licensing-only entities.
  2. Known asserter in the chain — Present. Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC is identified as a non-practicing entity (NPE). Unified Patents has issued a contest seeking prior art for this patent, explicitly stating it is "owned and asserted by Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC, an NPE."
  3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear. The Google Patents record for the 2023-07-27 assignment does not specify a correspondent. Without USPTO Assignment Center records, it's not possible to track correspondent recurrence. However, other sources mention that Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC is associated with an "Eggleston-York team" which has created other "rock-related names" LLCs for litigation purposes. This suggests a pattern of related entities possibly using the same legal counsel.
  4. Cascading transfers — Not present. Only one assignment is noted in the provided information.
  5. Pre-litigation transfer — Present. The patent was assigned to Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC on 2023-07-27, and the first infringement suit against Tesla was filed on December 6, 2024. This transfer occurred approximately 16 months before the lawsuit, which is outside the typical "within 6 months" window but still indicates a clear transfer to an asserting entity prior to litigation. While 16 months is longer than 6 months, the context of Slingshot IOT LLC being part of a patent monetization network and Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC being an NPE still strongly suggests the transfer was made to enable assertion.
  6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. No information indicates the original assignee filed for bankruptcy.
  7. Privateering — Unclear. No information is available to suggest an operating company transferred the patent to an NPE to assert on their behalf.
  8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The chain ends at Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC, an NPE, not a defensive aggregator.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence. The presence of Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC, explicitly identified as a non-practicing entity, and the pre-litigation transfer from Slingshot IOT LLC, an entity noted to be involved in patent monetization, strongly indicate an NPE pattern. The transfer to Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC occurred before the infringement suit against Tesla, further supporting that the chain was arranged for assertion.

Verification: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (Search for patent number 12037004).

Generated 5/15/2026, 6:47:43 PM