Patent 12576084

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. 2026-01-12 · reel 005726/0009 · Security Interest

    SPRUCE BIOSCIENCES, INC.AVENUE CAPITAL MANAGEMENT II, L.P.

    Correspondent: BIANCA K. BEAM · COOLEY

    securitization

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

  • Alexis HOWERTON
  • Hal GERBER

Employer at the time of filing: Spruce Biosciences Inc. (deduced from original assignee). No unusual patterns detected regarding inventor departures.

Original assignee

The original assignee is Spruce Biosciences Inc., a biotechnology company focused on novel therapies for rare endocrine diseases. They are developing tildacerfont, a CRF1 antagonist, for treating classic congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH). The patent itself describes methods for treating TART and OART, which are complications of CAH, using CRF1 antagonists, including specific compounds like Compound 1. This suggests the patent claims directly relate to their primary line of business and product development.

Current status: Operating. Spruce Biosciences Inc. is an active, publicly traded company (NASDAQ: SPRB).

Assignment timeline

The USPTO Patent Assignment Search for patent US12576084B2 reveals one assignment record:

  • 2026-01-12 (executed) / recorded 2026-01-12 — Reel 005726/0009
    • Conveyance: Security Interest
    • Assignor: SPRUCE BIOSCIENCES, INC.
    • Assignee: AVENUE CAPITAL MANAGEMENT II, L.P.
    • Correspondent: BIANCA K. BEAM, COOLEY LLP, 3000 EL CAMINO REAL, 5 PALO ALTO SQUARE, PALO ALTO, CA 94306.
    • Context: Securitization (granting a security interest in the patent as collateral for a loan or other financial obligation).

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 12576084
    2025 : Filed by Spruce Biosciences
    2026 : Security interest to Avenue Capital
         : Granted to Spruce Biosciences

NPE / troll-pattern signals

  1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. The assignor, Spruce Biosciences Inc., is an operating company. The assignee, AVENUE CAPITAL MANAGEMENT II, L.P., is an investment firm, and the conveyance is a security interest, not a full assignment of title.
  2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. AVENUE CAPITAL MANAGEMENT II, L.P. is an investment firm, not a known patent asserter.
  3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear. Only one assignment is recorded for this patent, so no recurrence can be observed within its chain. The correspondent, BIANCA K. BEAM of COOLEY LLP, is a common correspondent for various technology companies, so a single appearance here does not indicate an NPE pattern.
  4. Cascading transfers — not present. Only one assignment is recorded for this patent.
  5. Pre-litigation transfer — unclear. While Google Patents indicates "Family has litigation," no specific litigation case details (including filing dates) are currently available for US12576084 to compare with the assignment date. The single recorded assignment is a security interest, not an outright transfer of ownership, which is less indicative of pre-litigation maneuvering for assertion purposes.
  6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. Spruce Biosciences Inc. is an active, operating company.
  7. Privateering — not present. The single recorded transfer is a security interest to an investment firm, not a transfer to an NPE for assertion on behalf of Spruce Biosciences.
  8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The chain does not terminate at a known defensive aggregator.

Verdict

Insufficient data. Only one assignment record is publicly available through the USPTO Assignment Center, which is a security interest, not a transfer of ownership. This single record and the current ownership by an operating company (Spruce Biosciences Inc.) do not provide sufficient signals to confidently classify this patent as being involved in NPE activity.

USPTO Assignment Center search page for verification: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/

Generated 6/19/2026, 12:46:53 AM