US 7944577

I'll research US patent 7944577, searching the USPTO database and checking for any CAFC 2026 docket activity, while being careful to interpret the patent number literally.

I found the abstract and some litigation documents. Now let me retrieve the actual claim language and check for any CAFC 2026 docket activity more specifically.

I have the abstract and bibliographic data. The claims section wasn't included in the full text I have, so let me retrieve the actual claim language for US7944577 and also double-check for any CAFC 2026 docket entries.

I've reached the limit of my search steps, but I have enough to give you a well-grounded summary. Here it is, with explicit flags on anything I could not verify authoritatively.

US Patent 7,944,577 B2 — Summary

Title: Output controller for mobile and pervasive digital content output
Patent/Application Nos.: US 7,944,577 B2; Appl. No. 11/933,005 (pre-grant publication US 2008/0278746 A1)
Inventors: William Ho Chang (Vancouver, WA, US); Christina Ying Liu (Vancouver, WA, US)
Assignee (original): Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. (Portland, OR, US). Per the Google Patents assignment record, the patent was reassigned to FLEXIWORLD TECHNOLOGIES, INC. on 2021-07-30 (same entity name, formal assignment record).
Filing date: October 31, 2007
Earliest priority date: November 20, 2000 (continuation family dating to 2000)
Issue (grant) date: May 17, 2011
Legal status: Expired – Fee Related; adjusted expiration noted as 2023-01-29.

Abstract (verbatim from USPTO/FreePatentsOnline/Golden sources):
"Pervasive output capability is provided so that an information apparatus can pervasively output digital content to an output device regardless of the processing power, display screen size and memory space of the information apparatus. This allows small mobile devices with limited display, processing power, and memory to be able to output a digital document (e.g., PDF, HTML, PowerPoint etc) in its full original richness, without resorting to downsizing, truncating, reducing, clipping or otherwise altering the original document. A data output service method for rendering at an output device output content managed from an information apparatus may include obtaining by wireless communication from the information apparatus at least part of a document object relating to the output content, obtaining at least part of an output device object with one or more attributes relating to the output device, and providing the document object and the output device object to a server application operated on a server that is distinct from the information apparatus and the output device, and generating with the server application output data relating to the output device. The output data may then be provided to the output device for rendering the output content as the data output service."

What the patent covers (plain language): A system/method that lets a small mobile device (phone, PDA, pager, camera, etc.) output content — print, display, or play — on a nearby output device (printer, TV, projector, speakers) without the mobile device having to install a device-specific driver. The mobile device obtains a "document object" (content or a pointer to content) and an "output device object" (capability/attribute data about the target device), hands both to a remote server application, and the server does the heavy conversion into device-ready "output data." The output data is then sent back to the mobile device and wirelessly to the output device, which renders it — even when the mobile device itself cannot display the full document.

Independent claims — with a significant caveat

The full claims text was not included in the patent text you provided (it ends at the GUI figures), and I could not retrieve the complete "What is claimed" section verbatim from an authoritative source within my search budget. I therefore cannot state with certainty how many independent claims the granted patent has or quote them exactly.

What I did find: a USPTO PTAB petition document (ptacts.uspto.gov, petition file 1549999) quotes what it calls the "'577 Patent" (i.e., US 7,944,577) claim 1, broken into preamble elements and method steps. Based on that document, granted claim 1 appears to be a method claim performed by an output controller, requiring roughly:

• An output controller having a wireless communication unit, a processor, application software (including processing content with at least a digital imaging operation), and a memory/storage component for storing data and for queuing/spooling;
• Establishing a wireless communication channel with an information apparatus, including authenticating the apparatus or its user;
• Obtaining at least part of an output device object (attributes about the output device) and wirelessly providing it to the information apparatus;
• Receiving, wirelessly, output data from the information apparatus that includes the digital content for rendering plus device-dependent data related to the output device; and
• Queuing or spooling the received output data for rendering.
  The same document cites a dependent claim 12 reciting "the output controller is included in the output device."

⚠️ Uncertainty: This claim reconstruction comes from a PTAB petition document quoting the patent, not from the granted patent's claims page directly. Treat the exact wording and the total number of independent claims (the abstract suggests at least one method claim; the family's later continuations reference multiple independent claims) as unverified. If you need the exact claims, the authoritative source is the USPTO Patent Center/Google Patents claims section for US7944577, which I could not fully retrieve here.

Litigation / PTAB / CAFC status

• IPR2022-01269 — filed at the PTAB (petition by Unified Patents, per the Google Patents litigation metadata), status shown as Settlement.
• District court: Texas Western District Court, case 6:21-cv-00767 (per Unified Patents litigation data).
• CAFC 2026 dockets: I searched specifically for a 2026 CAFC (Federal Circuit) docket involving patent 7944577 or Flexiworld and found no CAFC 2026 docket entry. This is a negative result from web searches, not a definitive docket-database confirmation; I cannot rule out an appeal under a different docket reference. (Note: one search result referencing a "'794 patent" deposition about synchronized data segments "S1/S2" is a different patent, not this one — I excluded it as not being US 7,944,577.)

Bottom line: The core facts (title, inventors, assignee, dates, abstract) are confirmed across multiple sources. The independent-claim breakdown is based on a PTAB petition document quoting claim 1 and should be verified against the granted claims text if precision matters.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 7,944,577 ("the '577 patent")

Based on searches of the Stanford NPE Litigation Database, RPX, PACER Monitor, the PTAB (ptacts.uspto.gov), and the Unified Patents portal, I have identified two district-court cases and one PTAB proceeding tied to the '577 patent. Details and confidence flags are below.

1. Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. v. Roku, Inc.

• Plaintiff: Flexiworld Technologies, Inc.
• Defendant: Roku, Inc.
• Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Waco Division
• Case No.: 6:21-cv-00767-ADA
• Filing date: July 27, 2021
• Patents asserted: The '577 patent (claims 1 and 23, per a complaint analysis of the docket), together with family patents 9,836,257, 9,389,822, and a fourth patent ("'031"). Accused products included Roku streaming devices, the Roku Mobile App, Roku TV OS, and Roku TV products (TCL, Hisense, Philips).
• Status/outcome: Settled in 2022. The case was stayed pending Roku's standing and transfer motions and its PTAB petitions; the parties resolved the litigation as part of the settlement that terminated IPR2022-01269 (see below). Patexia's summary of the family litigation confirms the case "was resolved through a settlement in 2022."
• Sources: ptacts.uspto.gov petition exhibits (status report and complaint excerpts, Exs. 1018–1020); Patexia case listing (7/27/2021, W.D. Tex.); ai-lab.exparte.com complaint analysis for 6:21-cv-00767.

2. Roku, Inc. v. Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. — IPR2022-01269 (PTAB)

• Petitioner: Roku, Inc. (counsel: Perkins Coie)
• Patent Owner: Flexiworld Technologies, Inc.
• Tribunal: USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), inter partes review
• Proceeding No.: IPR2022-01269
• Filing date: July 29, 2022
• Patent/claims challenged: U.S. Patent No. 7,944,577, claims 1–14 and 23–25
• Status/outcome: Terminated — settled prior to institution. Joint motion to terminate filed October 27, 2022; Board's settlement termination decision issued October 31, 2022 (37 C.F.R. § 42.74); refund of the petition fee approved November 2022.
• Correction to prior analysis: The Google Patents litigation metadata labels this case under the "Unified Patents PTAB Data" license, which apparently led an earlier summary to infer the petitioner was Unified Patents. The actual petition (ptacts.uspto.gov, petition file 1549999) identifies Roku, Inc. as petitioner and Flexiworld as patent owner. Roku also filed contemporaneous IPRs against family members 9,389,822 and 9,836,257, and another family member (9,965,233) was challenged in IPR2022-01114.
• Sources: ipverse.greyb.com IPR case details; ptacts.uspto.gov IPR2022-01269 petition; PTAB termination decision dated Oct. 31, 2022.

3. Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. v. Sony Corporation

• Plaintiff: Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. (counsel: Nelson Bumgardner Conroy PC)
• Defendant: Sony Corporation
• Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division (Judge Rodney Gilstrap)
• Case No.: 2:23-cv-00616 (2:23-CV-00616-JRG)
• Filing date: December 19, 2023 (RPX Empower); Sony served January 17, 2024; First Amended Complaint filed June 6, 2024.
• Status/outcome: Dismissed with prejudice. The parties filed a Joint Stipulation of Dismissal (Dkt. 42) under Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(1)(A)(ii) dismissing "all pending claims and counterclaims" with prejudice; each party to bear its own costs. The Court acknowledged and accepted the stipulation and ordered the case closed. No merits ruling was issued.
• ⚠️ Flag — '577 patent involvement unverified at the amended-complaint stage: The Stanford NPE Litigation Database lists 7944577 among the patents in this case (case 2:23-cv-00616, E.D. Tex.). However, detailed patent lists for this case from PatSnap (7 asserted patents) and GoldenCompass (15 patents) do not include 7,944,577. The discrepancy is likely because the original complaint (Dec. 2023) asserted a broader set of patents, including the '577, and the First Amended Complaint (June 6, 2024) narrowed the case to seven patents (US 9,836,259, 11,096,056, 9,798,516, 9,042,811, 10,768,871, 11,029,903, and 10,162,596). I could not retrieve the original complaint's patent exhibit list within my search budget, so the assertion of '577 in the Sony case is plausible but not definitively confirmed; treat it as "reported by Stanford NPE DB, not confirmed by the amended-complaint patent lists."
• Sources: npe.law.stanford.edu/patent/7944577; litigation.rpxcorp.com (filed 12/19/2023); pacermonitor.com/public/case/51750256; PatSnap litigation summary (dismissal order verbatim, Dkt. 42); goldencompass.patentpia.com patent list.

Other potential matters — not confirmed for '577

• No CAFC (Federal Circuit) appeal involving the '577 patent was found — including no 2026 docket activity. Both district-court matters ended without appealable merits rulings (settlement; stipulated dismissal with prejudice), which is consistent with the absence of appellate activity.
• No ITC investigation involving the '577 patent was found.
• The Google Patents "family has litigation" tag (Darts-ip family 22957058) reflects litigation across the broader Flexiworld family (e.g., the IPRs against 9,389,822, 9,836,257, 9,965,233 and related district-court cases) and should not be read as additional '577-specific cases.

Patent status note relevant to remedies

The '577 patent is Expired – Fee Related, with adjusted expiration noted as January 29, 2023. Because the Roku case settled and the Sony case was dismissed with prejudice, no live damages window is at issue in pending litigation, but any hypothetical future assertion would be limited to pre-expiration damages.

Bottom line: Known litigation specific to US 7,944,577 is (1) Flexiworld v. Roku, 6:21-cv-00767-ADA (W.D. Tex., filed 7/27/2021, settled 2022); (2) the related PTAB IPR2022-01269 (Roku v. Flexiworld, filed 7/29/2022, terminated-settled 10/31/2022); and (3) Flexiworld v. Sony, 2:23-cv-00616 (E.D. Tex., filed 12/19/2023, dismissed with prejudice — with the caveat that the '577's presence in that case is per the Stanford NPE DB and not confirmed by amended-complaint patent lists). No CAFC 2026 or other appellate activity was found.

Proceedings overview

There is one AIA trial proceeding on US 7,944,577 that I can verify: IPR2022-01269 (Roku v. Flexiworld), which terminated by settlement before institution — so the count is: 1 settled / 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained on the merits / 0 institution denials. Bottom line for a defendant: no claim of the '577 patent has ever been canceled or even examined on the merits by the PTAB — the patent is PTAB-untested — but the sole IPR settled pre-institution, the patent expired in 2023 (fee-related, adjusted expiration 2023-01-29), and every ground Roku assembled remains legally available to a new, timely challenger.

⚠️ Source discrepancy, flagged: The canonical "PTAB proceedings on file" block in this prompt (USPTO ODP API ingest) reports no AIA trial proceedings. Live web search, however, confirms IPR2022-01269 from multiple independent sources — the USPTO PTACTS petition copy (ptacts.uspto.gov file 1549999), the Board's Termination Decision (DocketAlarm), and GreyB's PTAB case tracker. Per the operating rules (prefer live search results; flag conflicts), I treat IPR2022-01269 as real and flag that the ODP block is stale or incomplete.

IPR2022-01269 — Roku, Inc. v. Flexiworld Technologies, Inc.

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2022-07-29
• Status: Terminated-Settled (Board termination decision dated 2022-10-31; "we have not yet determined whether to institute trial"). Plain English: the case was settled and dismissed before the Board ever ruled on institution.
• Judge panel: Terrence W. McMillin, Christopher L. Ogden, and Brent M. Dougal, Administrative Patent Judges; the termination decision was authored by APJ Dougal. (DocketAlarm lists the same panel: Dougal, Ogden, McMillin.)
• Petition grounds: Roku petitioned for IPR of claims 1–14 and 23–25 of US 7,944,577, requesting cancellation under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103. Grounds identified in the petition:
  • Ground 1a: Saulpaugh (US 6,850,979) + Ghori (US 6,243,772) → claims 1–14 and 23.
  • Ground 1b: Saulpaugh + Ghori + Engeldrum (US 5,638,117) → claims 14 and 24–25.
  • Ground 2a / 2b: Gu (US 6,892,230) + Shamoon (US 7,233,948), with Engeldrum added for the color-correction limitation of claim 24 (per the petition's summary; the exact claim scope of Grounds 2a/2b is not fully visible in the snippet I retrieved — treat the 1a/1b mapping as verified, 2a/2b as partially verified).
  • Supporting evidence: declaration of Dr. Eli Saber (Ex. 1003), claim listing (Ex. 1004), file history (Ex. 1002), plus Flexiworld's own 2000 provisional applications (Exs. 1006–1010) and a later Chang patent (Ex. 1015) on the priority-date question. Roku applied a November 18, 2001 POSITA date while noting the patent claims priority to the 2000-11-20 provisional — expressly reserving the right to contest priority.
• Institution decision: None. The proceeding was terminated before the Board decided whether to institute (the termination decision states: "We have not yet determined whether to institute trial in these proceedings"). No § 314(a) analysis, no NHK-Fintiv analysis on the record.
• Final Written Decision: None issued. No claim of the '577 patent has been held unpatentable (or patentable) by the Board.
• Settlement / termination: On 2022-10-27, with Board authorization, the parties filed a Joint Motion to Terminate (Paper 7), a Settlement and Patent License Agreement (Ex. 2001), and a Joint Request to Keep Separate (Paper 8). The parties represented that they had "settled their entire dispute concerning the [subject] patent[s]" and that the Board had not decided the merits. The Board granted termination on 2022-10-31 under 37 C.F.R. § 42.74 and ordered the settlement agreement treated as business confidential and kept separate from the patent file (terms confidential — the title indicates a license was part of the deal, but the terms are not public). Roku's $22,500 post-institution fee was refunded (Notice of Refund, 2022-11-25). Petitioner's counsel: Perkins Coie (McKeever, Bombach, Day, Schunter; pro hac vice for Matthew C. Bernstein). Patent owner's counsel: Nelson Bumgardner Conroy P.C. (Bumgardner, Delafield, Ginnings).
• Appeal: None. There is no FWD to appeal, and I found no CAFC docket for this patent (including no 2026 CAFC entry).
• Defensive value: The IPR produced zero claim cancellations — Flexiworld walked away with all claims intact. But it also produced zero estoppel (see below), and Roku is now licensed and out of the picture. For a current defendant, this proceeding is evidence that Flexiworld will settle on a portfolio license rather than litigate to a merits decision — and that the strongest PTAB artillery (Saulpaugh/Ghori/Engeldrum/Gu/Shamoon) is still unfired and available.

Strategic summary

Claim status — CANCELED vs. SUSTAINED vs. UNTESTED. No claim of US 7,944,577 has been canceled, and no claim has been sustained on the merits — the Board never instituted trial. Claims 1–14 and 23–25 were challenged in the Roku petition but are untested (the petition died pre-institution). Claims outside that set (e.g., 15–22, if present) were never challenged at all. The only "adverse event" to the patent is not PTAB-related: the patent is expired — fee-related, adjusted expiration 2023-01-29 per USPTO records. That caps any recovery to pre-expiration conduct and forecloses injunctive relief; it also means the "troll" is asserting a dead patent for past damages only. (Verify the exact maintenance-fee/expiration status in USPTO Patent Center before relying on it.)

Estoppel landscape. Because IPR2022-01269 was terminated before institution, neither § 315(e)(1) (institution-stage estoppel) nor § 315(e)(2) (post-FWD estoppel) attached to anyone. All of Roku's prior-art grounds remain available — Saulpaugh, Ghori, Engeldrum, Gu, Shamoon, Slaughter (US 6,643,650), and Lamming (US 5,862,321), in any combination. The only practical constraint on reusing them is § 315(b)'s one-year bar, which runs from service of a complaint on each specific defendant — so a defendant served recently can file a fresh IPR on the same art. Roku itself is time-barred (served in the W.D. Tex. case by mid-2021) and is licensed, so it is not coming back.

Pattern signals. (1) Roku filed three coordinated IPRs on the same day — IPR2022-01267 (9,836,257), IPR2022-01268 (9,389,822), and IPR2022-01269 (7,944,577) — and settled all three in a single joint termination on 2022-10-31 with one Settlement and Patent License Agreement: a classic portfolio-wide settlement. (2) The earlier summary in this thread attributed the IPR to "Unified Patents" based on Google Patents metadata — that is a misreading: Unified Patents is merely the source of the PTAB data feed; the petition and Board decision identify Roku, Inc. as petitioner. (3) Unified Patents has separately attacked a sibling Flexiworld patent — IPR2022-00775 on 9,836,257 — and lost on the merits: the FWD (Paper 41, 2023-11-01) held claims 27–28 not unpatentable, crediting Flexiworld's corroborated October 22, 2000 conception via provisional-application metadata to swear behind the references. That is the single most important signal for this family: Flexiworld fights priority dates hard and has won. Any new petitioner on 7,944,577 should expect a § 102(e) swear-behind battle over the 2000-11-20 provisional priority date and must come prepared with conception/reduction-to-practice counter-evidence. (4) Downstream litigation has also fizzled: Flexiworld v. Roku, 6:21-cv-00767 (W.D. Tex.) was stayed during the IPR and resolved by the settlement; Flexiworld v. Sony, 2:23-cv-00616 (E.D. Tex.) was dismissed with prejudice by joint stipulation in 2024 with no merits ruling (per the PACER-derived order quoted by PatSnap; note that PatSnap's patent list for that case does not include 7,944,577, though Stanford's NPE database associates it — flagging the inconsistency).

Recommended next steps

1. Confirm the expiration defense first. Pull the maintenance-fee/status screen in USPTO Patent Center for 7,944,577. If "Expired — Fee Related" as the metadata indicates, assert it immediately: no post-2023-01-29 damages, no injunction, and a strong early-dismissal hook.
2. Do not assume IPR estoppel protects you — it doesn't. The Roku settlement produced no estoppel for anyone. If you were served within the last year, the Saulpaugh/Ghori/Engeldrum/Gu/Shamoon combination from the Roku petition (ptacts.uspto.gov file 1549999; also on DocketAlarm) is a ready-made § 103 roadmap — but budget for the priority-date fight Flexiworld already won once in IPR2022-00775 (FWD, Paper 41, 2023-11-01). Attack the 2000-11-20 provisional priority claim head-on; Flexiworld's conception evidence will be the battleground.
3. No active PTAB proceedings pending — there are no institution deadlines, oral-hearing dates, or FWD dates to track on this patent. The absence of an active IPR, combined with the patent's expiration, makes a merits-based PTAB defense optional rather than mandatory; for a recently served defendant, however, a fresh petition is still the cheapest path to killing or narrowing the remaining damages window.
4. Watch the broader Flexiworld portfolio. The same settlement pattern (IPR2022-01267/01268) and the Sony dismissal show Flexiworld resolving cases on licenses and stipulations rather than merits wins — a defendant facing a demand letter may find that a credible, timely IPR petition (even on the already-assembled art) is the leverage that produces a nuisance-value exit.

Key sources: Termination Decision (2022-10-31), IPR2022-01269 (DocketAlarm); Petition for IPR of US 7,944,577 (PTACTS file 1549999); case tracker (GreyB/IPverse, IPR2022-01269); IPR2022-00775 FWD discussion (PTAB Litigation Blog / JD Supra, 2023-11-01).

I'll research the assignment chain for US 7944577 through USPTO assignment records and cross-referencing sources.

The IPR detail is valuable — it was Roku (not Unified Patents as petitioner), and it settled pre-institution. Now let me find the actual USPTO assignment reel/frame records.

I found several Flexiworld assignment reel/frames from Epson's answers. Now I need the specific reel/frame for the '577 patent itself.

I've hit my search budget. Below is my reconstruction with every fact tagged by source and confidence level. I could not query the USPTO Assignment Center directly (no interactive access), so the reel/frame for the '577-specific recording is unverified; everything else is flagged accordingly.

Inventors

Unusual pattern worth flagging: Both inventors are the principals of the original assignee, and their assignment to Flexiworld was not recorded until 2021-07-30 — roughly 10 years after the patent issued (2011-05-17) and exactly as the 2021–2022 assertion campaign began (see below). That is a late standing-perfection pattern, not a fire-sale or departure pattern. (Source: Google Patents legal-events feed on the patent page; sibling-patent assignments admitted in Flexiworld v. Epson answers — see timeline.)

Original assignee

• Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. (Portland, OR, US) — named assignee on the issued patent (FreePatentsOnline/Google Patents bibliographic data).
• Products: No evidence in any source I retrieved that Flexiworld ever shipped a commercial product embodying these claims. Its known output is a large patent portfolio with 2000–2001 priority covering wireless/mobile printing, pervasive output, and digital-content output.
• Line of business: Patent development, licensing, and assertion. Since mid-2021 it has been litigating the family against major consumer-electronics companies (Epson — per Epson's admitted answers to Flexiworld's complaint; Roku — IPR2022-01269; plus W.D. Tex. case 6:21-cv-00767).
• Current status: Operating (not acquired, dissolved, or in bankruptcy) as a patent-assertion/licensing entity. It still owns the '577 patent; there is no recorded transfer away from Flexiworld.

Assignment timeline

Critical framing: The only recorded assignment event surfaced for US 7,944,577 is the inventors → Flexiworld assignment recorded 2021-07-30 (Google Patents legal events: "Assigned to FLEXIWORLD TECHNOLOGIES, INC. — ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS). Assignors: CHANG, WILLIAM HO, LIU, CHRISTINA YING"). This is the original assignment recorded late — not a post-issuance change of ownership. I found no assignment from Flexiworld to any third party for this patent. If the Assignment Center confirms nothing else, that means the original assignee still owns the patent.

• 2007-10-31 — Application 11/933,005 filed (continuation of a family dating to 2000-11-20). No assignment event recorded at filing in the Google Patents feed.
• 2011-05-17 — US 7,944,577 B2 granted to Flexiworld Technologies, Inc.
• ~2021-07-30 (recorded) — Reel/Frame not independently verified for the '577 ⚠️
  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest (original inventors' assignment, recorded late)
  • Assignor: William Ho Chang; Christina Ying Liu
  • Assignee: Flexiworld Technologies, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrievable within my search budget — do not fabricate. ⚠️
  • Context: litigation-standing perfection — the recording coincides with the start of the 2021 assertion campaign (W.D. Tex. 6:21-cv-00767; Epson suit; then Roku IPR in 2022).
  • Corroborating pattern: in Flexiworld v. Epson, Epson admitted batch-recorded Chang/Liu → Flexiworld assignments for sibling patents at 2021-era reels: 046519/0534 ('871), 042385/0202 ('031, '072, '178), 043675/0454 ('856), 039816/0200 ('596) — and a 2011-era recording at 028733/0064 ('402). The '577's own reel/frame was not among the numbers I could retrieve. (Source: action-intell.com copy of Epson's answers to Flexiworld's lawsuit.)

Plain finding: one-link chain — Chang & Liu → Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. Flexiworld remains the owner and is the party asserting the patent (Roku IPR2022-01269 respondent = Flexiworld; W.D. Tex. 6:21-cv-00767). No shell-LLC transfer, no cascade, no aggregator appears in the chain.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7944577
    2000 : Earliest priority date
    2007 : Filed as continuation
    2011 : Granted to Flexiworld
    2021 : Inventor assignment recorded
         : W D Tex infringement suit filed
    2022 : Roku IPR filed
         : IPR settled pre-institution

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. The patent never moved to an "IP / Licensing / Holdings" LLC. The current owner is the original assignee, a corporation (Flexiworld Technologies, Inc.). No registered-agent address or single-purpose LLC in the chain.

2. Known asserter in the chain — present (strong). Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. — the current assignee — is itself a serial patent plaintiff. Concrete evidence: (a) Flexiworld v. Epson — Epson's answers admit the suit and the assignment recordation (action-intell.com, Aug 2021); (b) IPR2022-01269, Roku, Inc. v. Flexiworld Technologies, Inc., filed 2021-07-29-style docket activity on 2022-07-29, settled pre-institution 2022-10-31 (ipverse.greyb.com PTAB case detail; patent 7944577, respondent appl. 11/933,005); (c) W.D. Tex. 6:21-cv-00767 (2021, per Unified Patents litigation data); (d) RPX Insight tracks Flexiworld's litigation (insight.rpxcorp.com litigation_documents/15143102), and the Unified Patents portal tracks the Flexiworld portfolio at scale. This satisfies "entity surfaced by Unified Patents or RPX as a high-frequency plaintiff." ⚠️ I could not confirm a formal line-item on a published NPE directory, so the "list" part is inferred from the tracking + docket evidence, not a directory screenshot.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear. The chain has only one link, so there is no recurrence to test. The correspondent of record for the 2021-07-30 recording could not be retrieved in my search budget. ⚠️

4. Cascading transfers — not present. No chained LLC assignments, no <24-month multi-hop sequence. The chain is inventors → Flexiworld only.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — present, in modified form. The 2021-07-30 recording of the inventors' assignment lands squarely at the opening of the 2021–2022 assertion campaign (W.D. Tex. 2021 suit; Epson answers Aug 2021; Roku IPR 2022). This is late standing-perfection — recording an assignment that should have been recorded at filing (2007) — done to establish a clean ownership record before suing. Sibling patents show the same batch pattern (reels 042385/0202, 043675/0454, 046519/0534). It is not a change of ownership, so I rate it moderate, not the classic "transfer to a new plaintiff" tell.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No Chapter 7/11, no court-supervised patent sale involving Flexiworld.

7. Privateering — not present. No evidence an operating company transferred patents to Flexiworld to assert against competitors. Flexiworld is the original assignee from the inventors.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. Flexiworld retains and asserts the patent.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

The two driving facts: (1) the current assignee, Flexiworld Technologies, Inc., is itself a high-frequency patent plaintiff (Epson suit, Roku IPR2022-01269, W.D. Tex. 6:21-cv-00767) with no evidence of any product business — the classic non-practicing-entity posture — and (2) the inventors' assignment was recorded only on 2021-07-30, a decade post-issuance, precisely as the assertion campaign launched (litigation-standing perfection; sibling patents batch-recorded at reels 042385/0202, 043675/0454, 046519/0534). I'm using "high confidence" rather than "moderate" because the asserter signal is strong and the litigation-timed recording corroborates it; the classic shell-LLC and cascading-transfer tells are absent only because the chain is a single link — Flexiworld is the NPE rather than a downstream buyer. Caveat: the '577's exact reel/frame and the recording correspondent remain unverified; confirm at the USPTO Assignment Center before relying on the specific 2021-07-30 entry.

Verification links: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search Patent No. 7944577) · https://ipverse.greyb.com/ptab-web/cases/case-details/IPR2022-01269 · https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Texas%20Western%20District%20Court/case/6%3A21-cv-00767