Assignment history

Inventors

• James Logan: No employer is specified in the patent text. He appears to be the central figure in the subsequent assertion of the patent, with the ownership chain passing through him personally and his family trust.
• Daniel F. Goessling: No employer is specified in the patent text.
• Charles G. Call: No employer is specified in the patent text.

The patent was filed by three individuals, not an operating company, which is a common pattern for patents that are later acquired or asserted by entities formed by the inventors themselves. There are no unusual departure patterns as there was no initial corporate assignee.

Original assignee

The patent's face indicates the original assignee as "Individual". This is consistent with the first recorded assignment, where the three named inventors are the assignors. There is no public record indicating that the inventors shipped a commercial product embodying the claims prior to the patent's assertion. The invention described is an early conception of a podcasting-like system, pre-dating the widespread commercialization of such technology.

Assignment timeline

The USPTO Patent Assignment Search database lists four recorded assignments for US patent 6,199,076.

• 2008-02-27 (executed) / recorded 2008-02-27 — Reel 020387/0578

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: James Logan, Daniel F. Goessling, Charles G. Call
  • Assignee: PERSONAL AUDIO, INC. (a Delaware corporation)
  • Correspondent: Robert P. Donovan, Esq., Donovan & Yee LLP, New York, NY
  • Context: The three inventors assigned their patent to a corporate entity, Personal Audio, Inc., more than seven years after the patent issued.

• 2008-02-27 (executed) / recorded 2008-02-27 — Reel 020387/0581

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: PERSONAL AUDIO, INC.
  • Assignee: LOGAN, JAMES D.
  • Correspondent: Robert P. Donovan, Esq., Donovan & Yee LLP, New York, NY. This is the same correspondent as the prior and all subsequent recordings for this patent.
  • Context: On the same day it received the patent, the corporation assigned it back to one of the inventors, James D. Logan.

• 2008-02-27 (executed) / recorded 2008-02-27 — Reel 020387/0584

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: LOGAN, JAMES D.
  • Assignee: JAMES D. LOGAN AND KERRY M. LOGAN FAMILY TRUST
  • Correspondent: Robert P. Donovan, Esq., Donovan & Yee LLP, New York, NY.
  • Context: In the third same-day transaction, inventor James Logan assigned the patent from himself to his family trust.

• 2009-06-27 (executed) / recorded 2009-06-27 — Reel 022631/0746

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: JAMES D. LOGAN AND KERRY M. LOGAN FAMILY TRUST
  • Assignee: PERSONAL AUDIO LLC (a Texas limited liability company)
  • Correspondent: Robert P. Donovan, Esq., Donovan & Yee LLP, New York, NY.
  • Context: The family trust assigned the patent to the entity, Personal Audio LLC, which would go on to file multiple infringement lawsuits.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6199076
    2001 : Patent issued to individual inventors
    2008 : Assigned to Personal Audio Inc
         : Assigned back to inventor James Logan
         : Re-assigned to Logan Family Trust
    2009 : Assigned to Personal Audio LLC
         : First infringement suit filed vs Apple

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Present. The patent was moved through a series of entities culminating in Personal Audio LLC, a Texas limited liability company with no known products, which exists to license and litigate the patent portfolio (Reel 022631/0746).

2. Known asserter in the chain — Present. The current assignee, Personal Audio LLC, is a widely-known patent assertion entity, as documented by sources like Unified Patents and confirmed by its extensive litigation history against Apple, Google, and others.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Present. Attorney Robert P. Donovan of Donovan & Yee LLP is the correspondent of record for all four assignments in the chain (Reels 020387/0578, 020387/0581, 020387/0584, and 022631/0746). This recurrence demonstrates that the series of transfers was a single, coordinated legal strategy orchestrated by the same counsel.

4. Cascading transfers — Present. The first three assignments occurred on the exact same date, February 27, 2008, moving the patent from the inventors, to a corporation, back to an inventor, and into a family trust in a rapid sequence (Reel 020387). This is a hallmark of setting up an ownership structure for assertion.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Present. The final assignment to the asserting entity Personal Audio LLC was executed on June 27, 2009 (Reel 022631/0746). The first major infringement suit, Personal Audio LLC v. Apple Inc., was filed in 2009 (Case 9:09-cv-00111), indicating the transfer was made to prepare for litigation.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. There is no evidence of bankruptcy proceedings in the ownership chain.

7. Privateering — Unclear. This is not a classic privateering case where a large operating company offloads a patent for assertion. Instead, it is a case of an inventor-controlled entity asserting the inventor's own patent.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The chain terminates with the asserting entity.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence

The ownership record for US patent 6,199,076 displays multiple, strong signals of a patent being prepared for assertion by a non-practicing entity. The chain of title shows a cascade of three same-day transfers (Reel 020387) and a final pre-litigation transfer (Reel 022631/0746) into the known asserter Personal Audio LLC, all handled by the same correspondent attorney. This pattern, combined with the assignee's lack of products and extensive litigation history, confirms its status as an NPE vehicle.

Verification Link: USPTO Assignment Search for Pat. No. 6199076