Assignment history

Inventors

• Lei Pan (University of California San Diego)
• Lubomir R. Bic (University of California San Diego)
• Michael B. Dillencourt (University of California San Diego)

Original assignee

The original assignee on the issued patent US7712080B2 is the University of California San Diego (UCSD). UCSD is a public land-grant research university. Their primary line of business is education and research, including various scientific and engineering fields, as well as health care through UC San Diego Health. They do not typically ship products embodying patent claims, but rather engage in research and license their intellectual property. UCSD is currently operating.

Assignment timeline

• 2004-11-01 (executed) / recorded 2004-11-01 — Reel 015945/0486
  • Conveyance: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST
  • Assignor: DILLENCOURT, MICHAEL B., BIC, LUBOMIR R., PAN, LEI
  • Assignee: THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
  • Correspondent: Not specified
  • Context: Internal reorg (transfer from individual inventors to the university's regents, a common practice for university employees' inventions).

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7712080
    2004 : Assigned to The Regents of the University of California
    2010 : Issued

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. The only recorded assignment is from the individual inventors to the Regents of the University of California, which is the governing body of UCSD, a research institution. There is no evidence of transfer to a licensing-only LLC.
2. Known asserter in the chain — Present. Unified Patents indicates that US7712080 is owned and asserted by Intellectual Ventures LLC, which is a known Non-Practicing Entity (NPE). However, this transfer is not reflected in the USPTO assignment records available for public search.
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Not present. There is only one recorded assignment, and no correspondent information is explicitly listed on the Google Patents legal events for that entry.
4. Cascading transfers — Not present. There is only one recorded assignment.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — Unclear. While Unified Patents notes litigation activity for this patent, the transfer to Intellectual Ventures (the asserted owner) is not reflected in the USPTO assignment records. Therefore, it is impossible to determine if a transfer occurred within 6 months of litigation based solely on the official assignment records.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. The University of California is an operating educational and research institution, not in bankruptcy.
7. Privateering — Unclear. While the patent is associated with a known NPE (Intellectual Ventures), there is no public information to suggest a privateering arrangement with the original assignee, UCSD.
8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The patent is currently associated with Intellectual Ventures, which is an NPE, not a defensive aggregator.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence. The patent is identified by Unified Patents as being owned and asserted by Intellectual Ventures LLC, a well-known Non-Practicing Entity (NPE). Although the formal assignment record to Intellectual Ventures is not publicly available on the USPTO Assignment Center, the information from Unified Patents, an anti-NPE organization that tracks patent assertions, provides strong evidence of NPE ownership and assertion. This classification is based on the known identity of the current asserter, Intellectual Ventures.

For verification of USPTO assignment records, please visit: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/