Assignment history

Inventors

• Hyun Lee: Employee of Netlist, Inc. at time of filing.
• Jayesh R. Bhakta: Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Netlist, Inc. at time of filing.

There are no unusual patterns. The inventors assigned the patent to their employer, which is a standard corporate practice.

Original assignee

The original and current assignee of record is Netlist, Inc., a publicly traded company based in Irvine, California. Netlist designs, manufactures, and sells high-performance SSDs and modular memory subsystems for enterprise-class servers and storage systems. The company actively develops and ships products, including various types of memory modules, that embody the technologies claimed in its patents. Netlist is an operating company and is also known for its extensive and aggressive patent litigation campaigns.

Assignment timeline

A search of the USPTO Patent Assignment Database shows a single recorded assignment for this patent.

• 2017-10-04 (executed) / recorded 2017-10-05 — Reel 043213/0503
  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors Interest
  • Assignor: Hyun Lee; Jayesh R. Bhakta
  • Assignee: Netlist, Inc.
  • Correspondent: Kevin Henning, ONE LLP, 4000 MacArthur Blvd., Suite 1100, East Tower, Newport Beach, CA 92660
  • Context: Routine assignment from inventors to their employer.

Verify at USPTO Patent Assignment Search for US 9,824,035

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 9824035
    2017 : Application filed by Netlist Inc
         : Assigned by inventors to Netlist Inc
         : Patent Issued
    2021 : First infringement suit filed vs Samsung
    2022 : PTAB IPR proceeding filed by Samsung

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. The patent has remained with the original assignee, Netlist, Inc., which is an operating company that manufactures and sells products.
2. Known asserter in the chain — Present. While Netlist is an operating company, it is also a well-documented and prolific patent plaintiff. It is listed as a frequent asserter by both RPX and Unified Patents. This specific patent, US 9,824,035, has been asserted in litigation against Samsung, Micron, and Google.
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Not present. There is only one assignment on record (inventors to company), so no pattern can be established.
4. Cascading transfers — Not present.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. The assignment from the inventors to Netlist was a standard-course event that occurred years before the first litigation involving this patent.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present.
7. Privateering — Not present. Netlist asserts its patents directly, not through a third-party NPE.
8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion

Netlist, Inc. is an operating company that designs and sells memory products, and it is the original and sole assignee of US 9,824,035. However, Netlist is also a highly active patent litigant that uses its portfolio to sue competitors and major technology companies, including asserting this specific patent in multiple high-profile cases. This is a clear case of an operating company directly asserting its own patents against competitors in the market.