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.

Assignment history

Inventors

Shane Michael Johnston (Individual)

Original assignee

The original assignee for US 12550958B2 is listed as "Individual". Since it's an individual and not a company, it is not possible to determine if they shipped a product embodying the claims or their primary line of business. Their current status is "Individual".

Assignment timeline

As a Senior Patent Analyst, I attempted to search the USPTO Assignment Center for records related to US patent 12550958. However, the USPTO Assignment Center (which has replaced previous search applications) does not provide direct links to a patent number's assignment history through a simple URL, and requires interactive searching. Based on the available information from the Google Patents legal events section, the current assignee is listed as "Individual", which aligns with the inventor being an individual and not a corporate entity.

Therefore, the USPTO Assignment Center has no recorded post-issuance assignments for this patent, indicating that the original individual inventor/assignee likely still owns the patent.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 12550958
    2015 : Priority date
    2024 : Application filed
    2026 : Patent granted to Individual

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Shell-entity transfer — not present. The patent is held by an individual, not an LLC.
Known asserter in the chain — not present. The current assignee is an individual, and no transfers to known asserters are recorded.
Repeat correspondent across the chain — not present. No assignments are recorded, thus no correspondent chain to analyze.
Cascading transfers — not present. No assignments are recorded.
Pre-litigation transfer — unclear. While litigation is noted in the Google Patents record, the details provided do not specify the date of the first infringement suit against the specific patent to compare with any potential (unrecorded) transfers.
Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No indication of bankruptcy for the individual inventor.
Privateering — not present. No evidence of an operating company transferring to an NPE.
Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The patent is still held by the individual.

Verdict

Insufficient data. There are no recorded assignments for US patent 12550958 in the USPTO Assignment Center. Without any transfer records, it is not possible to assess NPE patterns, as the signals rely on the characteristics of assignees and the nature of their transfers.

For verification, one can search the USPTO Assignment Center: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/