Assignment history

Inventors

• Olle Lindén
• Kiril Trajkovski
• Per Sennström
• Carl Ståhl
• Markus Millfjord
• Henrik Hovmøller

All inventors were associated with the original assignee, Epickal AB, which was later renamed Earin AB. There are no indications of unusual departure patterns following the patent filing.

Original assignee

The original assignee was Epickal AB, a Swedish company. Epickal AB developed and brought to market the product embodying the patent claims: the Earin M-1, one of the first commercially available true wireless stereo earbuds. The company was a startup funded in part by a successful Kickstarter campaign. It later changed its name to Earin AB and continued to operate, releasing subsequent product generations. The company appears to still be operating.

Assignment timeline

• 2015-04-16 (executed) / recorded 2015-04-16 — Reel 035041/0082

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignor's Interest
  • Assignor: Olle Lindén, Kiril Trajkovski, Per Sennström, Carl Ståhl, Markus Millfjord, Henrik Hovmøller (the inventors)
  • Assignee: Epickal AB
  • Correspondent: Perkins Coie LLP, 1201 Third Avenue, Suite 4900, Seattle, WA 98101
  • Context: Formal assignment of invention rights from the individual inventors to the operating company they founded.

• 2016-10-27 (executed) / recorded 2016-10-27 — Reel 039864/0488

  • Conveyance: Change of Name
  • Assignor: Epickal AB
  • Assignee: Earin AB
  • Correspondent: Perkins Coie LLP, 1201 Third Avenue, Suite 4900, Seattle, WA 98101 (same correspondent as the initial assignment)
  • Context: The original assignee, Epickal AB, formally recorded its change of name to Earin AB. This is an administrative change, not a transfer of ownership to a different entity.

A search of the USPTO Patent Assignment Search database for US Patent 9,402,120 reveals no further assignments recorded after October 27, 2016.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 9402120
    2014 : Application filed by inventors
    2015 : Assigned to Epickal AB
    2016 : Granted by USPTO
         : Epickal AB changes name to Earin AB

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer: Not present. The only transfers recorded are from the inventors to the operating company they founded, and a subsequent change of name for that same operating company (Reel 039864/0488). The assignee, Earin AB, manufactures and sells products.

2. Known asserter in the chain: Not present. Neither Epickal AB nor Earin AB appear on public lists of high-frequency patent asserters maintained by RPX or Unified Patents.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain: Present. Perkins Coie LLP is the correspondent of record for both the initial assignment (Reel 035041/0082) and the change of name (Reel 039864/0488). However, Perkins Coie is a large, international law firm that represents a wide variety of clients, including many operating companies. This recurrence on its own, for a simple two-step administrative chain for a startup, is not a strong signal of NPE activity.

4. Cascading transfers: Not present. There are no rapid, successive transfers.

5. Pre-litigation transfer: Not present. The last recorded assignment event was a name change in 2016. The patent has been asserted in litigation beginning in 2024, but no recent assignment was recorded to facilitate this.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale: Not present. The original assignee is still operating.

7. Privateering: Not present. There is no evidence of a transfer to a third-party assertion entity.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE): Not present. The chain does not terminate at a known defensive aggregator.

Verdict

Insufficient data

The recorded assignment history at the USPTO shows a clean chain of title from the inventors to their operating company, Epickal AB, followed by a simple name change to Earin AB (Reel 039864/0488). Earin AB is a known product company that commercialized the patented technology. However, public litigation databases show this patent is being asserted in 2024 and 2025. This suggests either Earin AB is asserting its own patent, or there has been an unrecorded transfer of ownership to an assertion entity. Without a recorded assignment reflecting a change in ownership to a plaintiff, a definitive call on the current assertion posture is not possible from the assignment record alone.

For verification, the assignment records can be searched at the USPTO Patent Assignment Search by entering 9402120 in the "Patent Number" field.