Assignment history

Inventors

• Carlos A. Pérez LaFuente (employer at time of filing not determinable from patent document)

Original assignee

AFIRMA CONSULTING & TECHNOLOGIES SL.
Their primary line of business and whether they shipped a product embodying the claims are not determinable from the patent document. Their current status is "Original Assignee" as listed on Google Patents, suggesting they were the initial assignee.

Assignment timeline

• 2015-06-18 (executed) / recorded 2015-06-18 — Reel not provided by source
  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: PEREZ LAFUENTE, CARLOS ALBERTO
  • Assignee: AFIRMA CONSULTING & TECHNOLOGIES, S.L.
  • Correspondent: Not provided by source.
  • Context: Inventor assigned rights to original assignee.
• 2023-07-17 (executed) / recorded not provided by source — Reel not provided by source
  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: AFIRMA CONSULTING & TECHNOLOGIES SL
  • Assignee: AVANT LOCATION TECHNOLOGIES LLC
  • Correspondent: Not provided by source.
  • Context: Transfer of ownership to a new entity.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 9485621
    2015 : Filed by AFIRMA CONSULTING & TECHNOLOGIES SL
         : Assigned from inventor to AFIRMA
    2016 : Issued
    2023 : Assigned to AVANT LOCATION TECHNOLOGIES LLC

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — unclear. While "AVANT LOCATION TECHNOLOGIES LLC" in the 2023 assignment might suggest a licensing entity by name, there is no information about their products in commerce, address as a registered-agent service, or jurisdiction of formation available in the provided patent text to confirm this.
2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. None of the assignees (AFIRMA CONSULTING & TECHNOLOGIES SL, AVANT LOCATION TECHNOLOGIES LLC) are explicitly listed as known NPEs in the provided context.
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear. Correspondent information is not provided in the supplied text for any of the assignments.
4. Cascading transfers — not present. There are only two recorded assignments, executed in 2015 and 2023, which does not constitute multiple consecutive assignments in a short timeframe.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — unclear. While the patent family has litigation, the exact date of the first infringement suit is not precisely linked to the 2023 assignment date in a way that confirms it was within 6 months before the first suit.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No indication of bankruptcy for the original assignee or any other entity in the chain is provided.
7. Privateering — not present. There is no information to suggest an operating company transferred the patent to an NPE to assert on its behalf.
8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The chain does not terminate at any known defensive aggregators like RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or Open Invention Network.

Verdict

Insufficient data. While there is a transfer of ownership from the original assignee to an LLC (AVANT LOCATION TECHNOLOGIES LLC in 2023), there is not enough information regarding the nature of this entity (e.g., product sales, business focus, or involvement in prior assertions) or the correspondent attorneys to confidently label it as an NPE pattern. The provided patent text does not include detailed assignment records from the USPTO Assignment Center that would contain correspondent names or reel/frame numbers, which are critical for identifying many NPE signals.

USPTO Assignment Center search for US9485621: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/