Patent 9991030

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 (2)

Asserters network →

Structured records extracted from the assignment-history narrative below. Each entity links to its full ownership-network profile.

2014-10-20 · recorded 2017-06-01 · reel 042560/0853 · Assignment
WEHRLI, ANDREW JOHN; CLARK, WILLIAM THOMAS; GAREIS, GALEN MARK BELDEN INC.
Correspondent: C. J. RUSSOMANNO
Internal transfer of inventorship rights to the corporate employer.
2025-07-18 · reel 071765/0093 · Security Interest
BELDEN INC.JPMORGAN CHASE BANK, N.A., AS ADMINISTRATIVE AGENT
Correspondent: BLAINE C. SWANSON · WINSTON & STRAWN
Securitization of assets, including the patent, by Belden Inc. to obtain financing.

Assignment history

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Inventors

Andrew John Wehrli (Employer: Belden Inc.)
William Thomas Clark (Employer: Belden Inc.)
Galen Mark Gareis (Employer: Belden Inc.)
Douglas David Brenneke (Employer: Belden Inc.)

The inventors Andrew John Wehrli, William Thomas Clark, and Galen Mark Gareis formally assigned their rights to Belden Inc. on October 20, 2014, prior to the patent application's filing and issuance. This is a standard practice for inventors working for a corporation. While Douglas David Brenneke is listed as an inventor, his name does not appear on the recorded assignment. This is not unusual and could be due to prior assignment or other internal corporate IP management practices.

Original assignee

The original assignee named on the issued patent is Belden Inc.. Belden Inc. is a global manufacturer of specialty cables, connectivity, and networking products, and they ship products embodying the claims described in the patent, which relates to high-performance data communications cables. Belden Inc. is currently an operating company.

Assignment timeline

2014-10-20 (executed) / recorded 2017-06-01 — Reel 042560/0853
- Conveyance: Assignment
- Assignor: WEHRLI, ANDREW JOHN; CLARK, WILLIAM THOMAS; GAREIS, GALEN MARK
- Assignee: BELDEN INC.
- Correspondent: C. J. RUSSOMANNO, 12948 OLIVE BOULEVARD, ST. LOUIS, MISSOIS 63141
- Context: Internal transfer of inventorship rights to the corporate employer.
2025-07-18 (executed) / recorded 2025-07-18 — Reel 071765/0093
- Conveyance: Security Interest
- Assignor: BELDEN INC.
- Assignee: JPMORGAN CHASE BANK, N.A., AS ADMINISTRATIVE AGENT
- Correspondent: BLAINE C. SWANSON, ESQ., WINSTON & STRAWN LLP, 35 W. WACKER DR., CHICAGO, IL 60601
- Context: Securitization of assets, including the patent, by Belden Inc. to obtain financing.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 9991030
    22/10/2013 : Priority date
    20/10/2014 : Inventors assign to Belden
    31/05/2017 : Application filed
    01/06/2017 : Inventors assignment recorded
    05/06/2018 : Patent granted
    18/07/2025 : Belden grants security interest to JPMorgan

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Shell-entity transfer — Not present. The recorded assignments do not show a transfer of ownership from an operating company to a licensing-only LLC. The security interest is a financing arrangement, not an ownership transfer for assertion.
Known asserter in the chain — Not present. Belden Inc. is an operating company, and JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. is a financial institution, neither of which are identified as known patent asserters in the provided context.
Repeat correspondent across the chain — Not present. The two recorded assignments have different correspondents: C. J. Russomanno for the inventor assignment and Blaine C. Swanson of Winston & Strawn LLP for the security interest. There is no recurrence of the same correspondent within this chain.
Cascading transfers — Not present. There are no multiple consecutive assignments through chained LLCs in a short timeframe.
Pre-litigation transfer — Unclear. Google Patents indicates that the patent family has litigation, including an IPR filed in 2023 and a US case filed in Delaware District Court (1:22-cv-00783). The inventor assignment was recorded in 2017, and a security interest was granted in 2025. Neither of these dates fall within a 6-month window prior to the noted litigation, suggesting they were not specifically timed for pre-litigation assertion setup.
Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. Belden Inc. is an active, operating company.
Privateering — Not present. There is no evidence of a transfer to an NPE for assertion on Belden Inc.'s behalf.
Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The current owner, Belden Inc., is an operating company, and the entity holding a security interest, JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., is a financial institution, neither of which are defensive aggregators.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion
The patent is owned by Belden Inc., an active operating company in the data communications cable industry, which presumably ships products embodying the claims. The recorded assignments primarily document the transfer from inventors to the operating company (Reel 042560/0853) and a standard security interest with a financial institution (Reel 071765/0093). There are no signals indicative of NPE involvement in the ownership chain.

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

Generated 6/27/2026, 6:45:42 AM