Patent 12156781

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 (1)

Asserters network →

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

  1. 2024-01-28 · reel 063706/0150 · Assignment of Assignors Interest

    Kofford, Brandon Dale; Rudisill, Charles AlbertSMART DENTURE CONVERSIONS, LLC

    Correspondent: Matthew S. Bethards

    internal reorg

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

Here's the reconstructed assignment record and NPE analysis for US patent 12156781.

Inventors

There are no unusual patterns indicating inventors departing the original assignee.

Original assignee

The original assignee, Smart Denture Conversions LLC, is an operating company whose primary line of business appears to be dental prosthetics systems and methods, particularly related to screw-attached pick-up dental coping systems. The patent itself describes systems and methods for converting existing removable dentures to screw-attached dentures and also for digital capture of converted prostheses. Their current status is "Active" according to Google Patents. It is unclear from the patent text alone whether they ship a product specifically embodying all the claims, but the detailed descriptions of systems and methods suggest active development and potential commercialization.

Assignment timeline

  • 2024-01-28 (executed) / recorded 2024-01-28 — Reel 063706/0150
    • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors Interest
    • Assignor: Kofford, Brandon Dale; Rudisill, Charles Albert
    • Assignee: SMART DENTURE CONVERSIONS, LLC
    • Correspondent: Matthew S. Bethards, 8040 S. Gessner Road, Ste. 100 Houston, TX 77071
    • Context: Internal transfer from inventors to the assignee company.

The USPTO Patent Assignment Search for US12156781 shows only one assignment on record.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 12156781
    2024 : Filed by Smart Denture Conversions LLC
         : Assigned from inventors to Smart Denture Conversions LLC
    2024 : Granted
    2025 : PTAB case PGR2025-00054 filed

NPE / troll-pattern signals

  1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. The patent was assigned from the individual inventors to Smart Denture Conversions LLC, which appears to be an operating company based on the patent's content and lack of other indicators.
  2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. Smart Denture Conversions LLC is not identified on commonly known NPE lists.
  3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear. Only one assignment is recorded, so there's no chain to observe recurrence. Matthew S. Bethards is the correspondent for the single recorded assignment.
  4. Cascading transfers — not present. There is only one recorded assignment.
  5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. The sole assignment (January 28, 2024) predates the PTAB case filing (June 4, 2025) by over a year.
  6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No indication of bankruptcy for Smart Denture Conversions LLC.
  7. Privateering — not present. No evidence suggests a transfer to an NPE asserting on behalf of an operating company.
  8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The chain does not terminate at a defensive aggregator.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion
The patent was assigned from the inventors to Smart Denture Conversions LLC in January 2024 (Reel 063706/0150), and the company appears to be an active entity in the dental prosthetics field. The current PTAB litigation (PGR2025-00054) filed by Straumann USA LLC against Smart Denture Conversions LLC suggests active assertion by the operating company, Smart Denture Conversions LLC, against a competitor.

Verification: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/

Generated 5/16/2026, 12:47:44 PM