Patent 12160681

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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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

  • Nobuaki Kabuto (Maxell Ltd.)
  • Yuya Ogi (Maxell Ltd.)

Both inventors were employed by Maxell Ltd., the original assignee, at the time of filing.

Original assignee

The original assignee on the issued patent US12160681B2 is Maxell Ltd. Maxell Ltd. is a Japanese company known for manufacturing various electronic products, including batteries, optical discs, and audio products. It is an operating company. Based on the provided patent information, it is not explicitly stated if Maxell Ltd. ships a product embodying the claims of this specific patent, but their primary line of business involves manufacturing and selling consumer and industrial electronic products. Maxell Ltd. is currently an operating company.

Assignment timeline

To reconstruct the full assignment record, I would need to perform a live search on the USPTO Assignment Center (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/) using patent number US12160681B2. As an AI, I do not have the ability to perform live web searches or interact with web forms.

Therefore, I cannot provide a chronological list of every recorded assignment, including reel/frame numbers, conveyance types, assignors, assignees, correspondents, and context for US12160681B2.

Based on the information provided in the prompt, which is limited to the Google Patents overview, the "Current Assignee" is Maxell Ltd., and the "Original Assignee" is also Maxell Ltd. This suggests that as of the information available in Google Patents, the patent has not been assigned away from the original assignee. Without access to the USPTO Assignment Center, I cannot confirm if there have been any internal assignments or other recordations that do not change the ultimate beneficial owner.

If the Assignment Center has no records for this patent, then the original assignee, Maxell Ltd., still owns the patent. Given the current information, there are no recorded post-issuance assignments publicly available in the provided text.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 121606681
    2009 : Priority date
    2023 : Application filed by Maxell Ltd
    2024 : Patent granted to Maxell Ltd

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Without access to the USPTO Assignment Center records, I cannot definitively determine the presence or absence of specific NPE/troll-pattern signals. The current assignee listed on Google Patents is Maxell Ltd., which is an operating company.

  1. Shell-entity transfer — Unclear. There are no recorded assignments in the provided data to assess this.
  2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. The current assignee, Maxell Ltd., is an operating company, not a known NPE from the provided lists.
  3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear. No assignment records are available to track correspondents.
  4. Cascading transfers — Unclear. No assignment records are available to assess this.
  5. Pre-litigation transfer — Unclear. While there is litigation mentioned, there are no recorded assignments in the provided information that can be dated relative to the litigation filing dates.
  6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. There is no indication of Maxell Ltd. being in bankruptcy or selling patents due to such.
  7. Privateering — Unclear. No information available to suggest this pattern.
  8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The chain ends at Maxell Ltd., not a defensive aggregator.

Verdict

Insufficient data

Without access to the USPTO Assignment Center records, it is not possible to reconstruct the full assignment timeline or definitively assess the presence of NPE/troll-pattern signals beyond the initial assignment to the operating company, Maxell Ltd. The available information only indicates that Maxell Ltd. is the original and current assignee.

Link to USPTO Assignment Center search page: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/

Generated 5/25/2026, 6:49:08 PM