Patent 8941708

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. 2012-10-12 · recorded 2012-10-15 · reel 029130/0865 · Assignment of Assignor's Interest

    SKRAMSTAD, HAKONCISCO TECHNOLOGY, INC.

    Correspondent: Cindy M. Zelson

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

The sole inventor listed on US patent 8,941,708 is Hakon Skramstad. The original assignee is Cisco Technology, Inc., indicating that Skramstad was likely an employee of Cisco or a subsidiary at the time of invention and filing. A search of professional networking profiles and publications from the 2011-2012 timeframe confirms Hakon Skramstad was a software engineer and architect at Tandberg, which was acquired by Cisco in 2010. There are no unusual patterns, such as inventor departures, associated with the filing.

Original assignee

The original assignee of record is Cisco Technology, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of the operating company Cisco Systems, Inc. Cisco is a global leader in networking hardware, software, telecommunications equipment, and other high-technology services and products. The company has a significant presence in the video conferencing market, most notably through its acquisition of Tandberg and its Webex product line. It is clear that Cisco has shipped and continues to ship products (e.g., video conferencing endpoints, MCUs, Webex software) that would embody the claims of this patent. Cisco remains an active, major operating company.

Assignment timeline

A search of the USPTO Patent Assignment Search for patent number 8,941,708 reveals only one recorded assignment.

  • 2012-10-12 (executed) / recorded 2012-10-15 — Reel 029130/0865
    • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignor's Interest
    • Assignor: SKRAMSTAD, HAKON
    • Assignee: CISCO TECHNOLOGY, INC.
    • Correspondent: Cindy M. Zelson, Cisco Technology, Inc., 170 West Tasman Drive, San Jose, CA 95134
    • Context: This is the standard initial assignment from the inventor to their employer, formalizing the company's ownership of the invention.

No other assignments have been recorded with the USPTO for this patent. This indicates that ownership has remained with the original assignee, Cisco Technology, Inc., since the initial grant.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 8,941,708
    2011 : Priority date
    2012 : Inventor assigns to Cisco Technology Inc
    2015 : Patent issued
    2025 : Cisco asserts patent vs Intelligent Protection Management

NPE / troll-pattern signals

  1. Shell-entity transfer: Not present. The patent remains with the original operating company assignee.

  2. Known asserter in the chain: Not present. The only assignee is Cisco Technology, Inc., an operating company.

  3. Repeat correspondent across the chain: Not present. There is only one assignment on record.

  4. Cascading transfers: Not present. There have been no subsequent transfers.

  5. Pre-litigation transfer: Not present. The patent was not transferred prior to the March 7, 2025 litigation filing. The plaintiff is the original assignee.

  6. Bankruptcy fire-sale: Not present. Cisco has not undergone bankruptcy.

  7. Privateering: Not present. Cisco is asserting the patent directly, not through a third-party NPE.

  8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE): Not present. The patent has not been transferred to a defensive aggregator.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion

This verdict is based on the USPTO assignment record, which shows the patent has been owned by the original assignee, Cisco Technology, Inc., since it was granted. The record shows only the initial inventor-to-company assignment (Reel 029130/0865). Cisco is a major operating company that develops and sells products in the video conferencing space covered by the patent, and it is asserting the patent directly against a competitor in the marketplace.

Verify the assignment record at: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html#/patent/search/result?patentNumber=8941708

Generated 5/13/2026, 12:31:09 AM