Held by the inventor: what "Individual" on the assignee line means

By Hemant K. Rohera — ORCID 0009-0005-3275-1743
Published 20 September 2026 · Last updated 20 September 2026

On all three granted United States patents in this portfolio, the assignee line reads Individual. There is no corporate assignee. Justia lists no assignee at all. The patents are held personally by the named inventor, Hemant K. Rohera, and not by any of the three companies associated with the technologies. This page sets out what that means, and what it does not mean, because both matter to anyone evaluating the portfolio.

What the record shows

What it means

The chain of title is one link long. A patent that has passed through a company, or several, accumulates a history that has to be traced: the employment or contractor agreement under which the invention was made, the assignment recording it, any subsequent assignment, any security interest granted over it, and the question of whether each step was properly executed and recorded at the relevant office. Here there is no such chain. The inventor filed, the inventor is the applicant, and the inventor holds the grant.

No employer claim arises. The most common defect found in diligence on an individually-developed invention is an unresolved question about whether an employer had rights at the time of conception. That question does not arise on a portfolio filed by the inventor in his own name, on his own account.

Nothing is encumbered by a company's history. The patents do not sit inside a balance sheet, so they are not exposed to anything that could happen to a company — no charge, no lien, no creditor claim, no effect from a corporate restructuring. Rohera Healthcare & Technology Private Limited, Rohera Emerging Energies Private Limited and Rohera Industries (OPC) Private Limited develop and commercialise the technologies; they do not own the patents, and public statements about them should not say they do.

What it does not mean

Three things, stated because a page that only lists advantages is not worth reading.

It is not a statement about value. Clean title makes a transaction simpler. It says nothing about whether the claims are commercially useful, whether the technology works at scale, or what the portfolio is worth. Those are separate questions and they are answered with engineering and evidence, not with a register entry.

There is no corporate infrastructure behind the filings. A portfolio held by an individual is maintained by an individual: annuities, deadlines and national-phase decisions all sit with one person rather than with an in-house IP function. That is a real operational difference and a counterparty is right to ask how it is managed.

A transfer still has to be recorded. Simple title is not the same as an instant transfer. An assignment must be executed and recorded at each office where a member of the family is granted, jurisdiction by jurisdiction, and that takes the time it takes.

A note on what a patent does and does not establish

A granted patent establishes that a claimed invention was found novel and non-obvious enough to be granted by the examining office, within the scope of its claims. It is not evidence that a product works, that a benefit has been clinically demonstrated, or that a market exists. Those require their own evidence, and on this site they are treated separately — the technical case is made in the published technical notes, not inferred from the fact of a grant.

Where to verify this

• Google Patents prints the assignee field on each grant, and for US 10,523,019 B2 shows both the original and the current assignee.
• Justia lists the portfolio across two inventor pages, because the USPTO record carries two spellings of the name — why that is, and how to read both.
• USPTO assignment records are the primary source for title and are searchable by patent number.
• The consolidated position across all three families, by jurisdiction, is on the patent register.

References