Patent 12353917

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. 2025-01-23 · Assignment

    Amjad Hussain, Kei Daniel Yasui, Alexander Pines, Samuel Winthrop Trapkin, Steven D. Lockshin, Eugene Michael FarrellVanilla Technologies Inc.

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

  • Amjad Hussain (Vanilla Technologies Inc.)
  • Kei Daniel Yasui (Vanilla Technologies Inc.)
  • Alexander Pines (Vanilla Technologies Inc.)
  • Samuel Winthrop Trapkin (Vanilla Technologies Inc.)
  • Steven D. Lockshin (Vanilla Technologies Inc.)
  • Eugene Michael Farrell (Vanilla Technologies Inc.)

All inventors appear to be associated with Vanilla Technologies Inc. at the time of filing. Gene Farrell is noted as the CEO of Vanilla, and Steve Lockshin is identified as the founder. Amjad Hussain is identified as the lead inventor and Vanilla CTO. There is no indication of all inventors departing the original assignee within 12 months of filing.

Original assignee

The original assignee on the issued patent is Vanilla Technologies Inc.
Vanilla Technologies Inc. is an active company that provides solutions to investment advisors for estate planning. Their platform leverages AI-powered technology and a network of attorneys to simplify and streamline the estate planning process, offering features like document creation, scenario modeling, and estate health checks. They have strategic partnerships with major financial firms like Cetera, Elevation Point, Osaic, Betterment, Mariner, and Carson Group. The company has successfully raised significant funding and is considered a leader in the estate planning software industry.

Assignment timeline

According to a search of the USPTO Assignment Center, there are no recorded assignments for US Patent 12353917 as of May 29, 2026. The patent information from Google Patents indicates an assignment on January 23, 2025, from the inventors to Vanilla Technologies Inc. This is typically an initial assignment from the inventors to their employer (the assignee) and is often recorded during the prosecution phase rather than as a post-issuance transfer. The USPTO Assignment Center search covers recorded assignments from August 1980 to the present.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 12353917
    2024 : Application filed by Vanilla Technologies Inc
    2025 : Assigned to Vanilla Technologies Inc
    2025 : Patent granted

NPE / troll-pattern signals

  1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. The initial assignee, Vanilla Technologies Inc., is an operating company with a clear line of business (estate planning software) and actively markets products embodying the claims.
  2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. Vanilla Technologies Inc. is not identified on public NPE lists.
  3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear. Without access to the actual recorded assignment document (Reel/Frame information not available from the provided text for the 2025-01-23 assignment), the correspondent cannot be identified to check for recurrence.
  4. Cascading transfers — not present. There is only one recorded assignment mentioned (inventors to Vanilla Technologies Inc.) in the patent's lifecycle.
  5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. While a PGR was filed in April 2026, the only noted assignment (January 2025) predates this by over a year.
  6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. Vanilla Technologies Inc. is an active and funded company.
  7. Privateering — not present. There is no evidence of Vanilla Technologies Inc. transferring the patent to an NPE for assertion on its behalf.
  8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The patent remains with Vanilla Technologies Inc., an operating company.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion
The patent is currently assigned to Vanilla Technologies Inc., an active operating company that develops and markets estate planning software. They have publicly announced receiving this patent for their technology, indicating it is core to their product offerings. The ongoing PGR proceeding, while challenging the patent's validity, does not indicate an NPE assertion, but rather a challenge by a competitor, Wealth Inc.

USPTO Assignment Center search: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (Search for patent number 12353917)

Generated 5/29/2026, 9:06:20 PM