Patent 9350649

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. 2021-05-13 · reel 057039/0476 · Assignment

    DE LANGIS, ERIC M.COMPETITIVE ACCESS SYSTEMS, INC.

    Correspondent: · BLANK ROME

    transfer-from-inventor

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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Inventors

Original assignee

The original assignee, Individual (Eric M. DeLangis), does not appear to have shipped a product embodying the claims under that name. The patent was subsequently assigned to Competitive Access Systems Inc. Competitive Access Systems Inc. is listed as the current assignee. No readily available information details their primary line of business or current status beyond being the assignee.

Assignment timeline

  • 2021-05-13 / recorded 2021-05-13 — Reel 057039/0476
    • Conveyance: Assignment
    • Assignor: DE LANGIS, ERIC M.
    • Assignee: COMPETITIVE ACCESS SYSTEMS INC.
    • Correspondent: BLANK ROME LLP, Attn: IP Docketing, ONE LOGAN SQUARE, 130 N. 18TH STREET, PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA UNITED STATES 19103-6998
    • Context: Transfer from individual inventor to a corporate entity.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 9350649
    2002 : Priority date
    2014 : Application filed by Individual
    2016 : Patent granted
    2021 : Assigned to Competitive Access Systems Inc.

NPE / troll-pattern signals

  1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. The initial transfer is from an individual inventor to a corporate entity (Competitive Access Systems Inc.). While Competitive Access Systems Inc. may not be a large product-shipping company, there is no immediate indication from the assignment record itself that it is a shell entity designed for licensing only.
  2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. Competitive Access Systems Inc. does not appear on commonly referenced NPE lists from sources like Unified Patents or RPX. Known asserters include, for example, Acacia Research Corp, Marathon Patent Group (now Marathon Digital Holdings), Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid / Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio IP Ventures, MPHJ Technology, Lumen View Technology, Round Rock Research, Document Generation Corp, and entities associated with Erich Spangenberg.
  3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — not present. Only one assignment is recorded, thus no recurrence can be observed.
  4. Cascading transfers — not present. Only one assignment is recorded.
  5. Pre-litigation transfer — unclear. There is insufficient information from the provided assignment record to determine if this transfer occurred within 6 months before the first infringement suit.
  6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No indication of bankruptcy proceedings for the assignor.
  7. Privateering — not present. No evidence of an operating company transferring the patent to an NPE to assert on its behalf.
  8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The chain does not end at a known defensive aggregator.

Verdict

Insufficient data (no records, or only the original assignment). Only one assignment is recorded (Reel 057039/0476, executed and recorded 2021-05-13), which is a transfer from the individual inventor to Competitive Access Systems Inc. This single transfer does not provide enough data points to identify definitive NPE or patent-troll patterns.

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

Generated 5/21/2026, 6:47:42 PM