Patent 12232681

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 (2)

Asserters network →

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

  1. ? · recorded 2023-12-11 · reel 065829/0088 · Assignment of Assignors Interest

    Kakehi, Sachie; Feddema, Mark S.; Snell, William J.Whirlpool Corporation, Michigan

    internal reorg

  2. ? · recorded 2025-10-02 · reel 072454/0544 · Assignment of Assignors Interest

    Balinski, Steven B.; Brightbill, David Jason; Roderick, Frederick Thomas; Ferencevich, Joseph T.; Naik, Sujit S.; Roth, Ryan KevinWhirlpool Corporation, Michigan

    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

  • Mark S. Feddema (Whirlpool Corp.)
  • William J. Snell (Whirlpool Corp.)
  • Sachie Kakehi (Whirlpool Corp.)

All named inventors were employed by Whirlpool Corp. at the time of the initial assignment.

Original assignee

The original assignee named on the issued patent is Whirlpool Corp. Whirlpool Corp. is a multinational manufacturer and marketer of home appliances, including dishwashers, and ships products embodying the claims of the patent. Whirlpool Corp. is currently operating.

Assignment timeline

A direct search of the USPTO Patent Assignment Search database for patent number US12232681 yielded no records. However, the legal events section for US12232681 on Google Patents, which draws from USPTO records, indicates two assignments related to the application leading to this patent, both transferring ownership to Whirlpool Corporation. These represent the initial assignments from the inventors to the company.

  • 2020-03-25 to 2020-03-30 (executed) / recorded 2023-12-11 — Reel 065829/0088

    • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors Interest
    • Assignor: Kakehi, Sachie; Feddema, Mark S.; Snell, William J.
    • Assignee: Whirlpool Corporation, Michigan
    • Correspondent: Not determinable from provided snippet.
    • Context: Initial assignment from inventors to the original assignee.

  • 2025-09-23 to 2025-09-25 (executed) / recorded 2025-10-02 — Reel 072454/0544

    • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors Interest
    • Assignor: Balinski, Steven B.; Brightbill, David Jason; Roderick, Frederick Thomas; Ferencevich, Joseph T.; Naik, Sujit S.; Roth, Ryan Kevin
    • Assignee: Whirlpool Corporation, Michigan
    • Correspondent: Not determinable from provided snippet.
    • Context: Assignment from additional assignors (likely inventors on related applications) to the original assignee.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 12232681
    2020 : Priority date
    2023 : Inventors assigned to Whirlpool
         : Application filed
    2025 : Issued to Whirlpool
         : Additional assignors to Whirlpool
         : Whirlpool sued Samsung

NPE / troll-pattern signals

  1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. All recorded assignments are to Whirlpool Corporation, a known operating company.
  2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. Whirlpool Corporation is an operating company, not a known NPE.
  3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear. The correspondent information is not determinable from the provided Google Patents snippets for the listed assignments.
  4. Cascading transfers — not present. There are only two assignments, both to the same operating company, with sufficient time between them.
  5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. The patent was issued to Whirlpool in February 2025, and the litigation was filed in October 2025 by Whirlpool, indicating Whirlpool is asserting its own patent. The assignments recorded are to Whirlpool, not from it.
  6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. Whirlpool Corp. is an active, operating company.
  7. Privateering — not present. Whirlpool is directly asserting the patent.
  8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The patent remains with Whirlpool Corp., an operating company actively asserting it.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion
The patent remains assigned to Whirlpool Corporation, a large operating company that manufactures and sells dishwashers. Whirlpool itself filed an infringement lawsuit against [[Samsung Electronics Co.](/litigations/by-defendant/Samsung%20Electronics%20Co.), Ltd.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Samsung%20Electronics%20Co.%2C%20Ltd.) in October 2025, demonstrating that this is an assertion by an operating company against a competitor. The recorded assignments show transfers to Whirlpool, not from it to another entity (Reel 065829/0088, Reel 072454/0544).

Search USPTO Patent Assignment Records for US12232681

Generated 5/29/2026, 11:52:34 PM