Patent 12159310

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. 2024-09-24 · reel 063391/0002 · Assignment

    BUECHE, MICHAEL PATRICK, JR., LIANG, MINYA, MEDINA, REYNALDO, OAKES, CHARLES LEE, III, PRASAD, BHARATUNITED SERVICES AUTOMOBILE ASSOCIATION

    Correspondent: Patrick J. Blain

    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

Inventors

The inventors named on US patent 12159310 are Michael Patrick Bueche, Jr., Bharat Prasad, Minya Liang, Reynaldo Medina, and Charles Lee Oakes, III. At the time of filing, all inventors were employees of the original assignee, United Services Automobile Association (USAA), as indicated by the "Current Assignee" and "Original Assignee" sections of the patent. No unusual patterns of inventors departing the original assignee around the filing date are discernible from the provided information.

Original assignee

The entity named on the issued patent as the original assignee is United Services Automobile Association (USAA).

USAA is a diversified financial services group of companies based in San Antonio, Texas. Its primary line of business includes insurance, banking, investments, and retirement solutions for members of the U.S. military and their families. USAA has shipped products embodying the claims, notably its mobile banking application which includes remote check deposit functionality that utilizes auto-capture technology. USAA is currently an operating company.

Assignment timeline

The provided patent text indicates one assignment event:

  • 2024-09-24 (execution date not explicitly stated, Google Patents uses this as an event date) / recorded 2024-09-24 — Reel 063391/0002
    • Conveyance: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST
    • Assignor: BUECHE, MICHAEL PATRICK, JR., LIANG, MINYA, MEDINA, REYNALDO, OAKES, CHARLES LEE, III, PRASAD, BHARAT (the inventors)
    • Assignee: UNITED SERVICES AUTOMOBILE ASSOCIATION (USAA)
    • Correspondent: BLAIN, PATRICK J. (USAA). This correspondent appears to be an internal counsel for USAA.
    • Context: Internal transfer of inventorship rights to the corporate assignee.

No other recorded assignments for US12159310 are explicitly identified in the provided patent text or the referenced Google Patents legal events beyond this initial assignment from the inventors to USAA.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 12159310
    2009 : Priority date
    2024 : Application filed
         : Inventors assigned to USAA
    2024 : Patent issued to USAA

NPE / troll-pattern signals

  1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. The patent was assigned from the individual inventors to United Services Automobile Association (USAA), a well-known operating company in the financial services sector.
  2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. USAA is an operating company, not a known NPE from public lists.
  3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — not present. Only one assignment is recorded, and the correspondent, BLAIN, PATRICK J. (USAA), appears to be internal counsel for the operating company, not a recurring correspondent associated with NPE activity.
  4. Cascading transfers — not present. Only one assignment is recorded.
  5. Pre-litigation transfer — unclear. The District Court case (2:25-cv-00082) was filed in Texas Eastern District Court in 2025. The recorded assignment from inventors to USAA occurred on 2024-09-24, more than six months before the 2025 litigation. However, the exact filing date of the first infringement suit is not specified, only the year. More precise dates would be needed to definitively rule this as present or not present.
  6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. USAA is an active operating company, not identified as being in bankruptcy proceedings.
  7. Privateering — not present. No evidence suggests USAA has transferred this patent to an NPE to assert on its behalf.
  8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The chain ends with USAA, an operating company, not a defensive aggregator.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion

The patent was assigned from the individual inventors to United Services Automobile Association (USAA) on 2024-09-24 (Reel 063391/0002). USAA is a well-established financial services operating company known for its mobile banking solutions, which include mobile check deposit functionality. The litigation activity (District Court case 2:25-cv-00082 and IPRs filed by other banks) suggests USAA is asserting this patent, likely against competitors or entities it perceives as infringing its technology.

USPTO Assignment Center search page for US12159310: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/patent/index.html?cn=12159310

References

Generated 5/29/2026, 5:34:43 PM