Belkin

Belkin International, Inc. (commonly "Belkin") is a US consumer-electronics manufacturer founded on April 18, 1983, by Chet Pipkin, and headquartered in the Playa Vista area of Los Angeles, California (corporate address also listed as El Segundo, CA). It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Foxconn Interconnect Technology (FIT Hon Teng Limited, HKEX: 6088), which acquired it for approximately US$866 million in a deal announced March 2018 and closed that September; FIT is majority-held by Hon Hai Precision Industry (Foxconn). Belkin is therefore private within a listed parent. PitchBook lists roughly 1,450 employees; SEC-equivalent HKEX filings reported Belkin revenue of about US$789 million (FY ended Sept. 30, 2017) and US$754 million (FY2016).

Belkin designs and sells device-connectivity and power accessories: chargers and wireless chargers, power banks, cables, adapters, surge protectors, screen protectors, docks and hubs, KVM switches, and racks/enclosures, sold through retailers, distributors, and direct channels. Through subsidiaries it also owns the Linksys networking brand (acquired from Cisco in 2013), the Wemo smart-home line, and the Phyn smart-water brand. As of 2018 the company reported over 700 patents and in-house R&D.

Patent-litigation posture: Belkin appears in the tracked data solely as a defendant (1 case, 0 as plaintiff), consistent with an operating company defending against assertion. The single tracked suit is Fundamental Innovation Systems International LLC v. TCL et al., filed April 23, 2020 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, naming Belkin Inc. and Belkin International, Inc. as defendants. RPX identifies Belkin (as Hon Hai Precision Industry) among roughly 20 defendants targeted by FISI, a Delaware-formed, Centerbridge Partners-backed NPE asserting USB-charging patents acquired from BlackBerry in a November 2015 transaction. The asserted patents cover USB charging adapters and related power-delivery technology; FISI's broader campaign has touched Apple, Samsung, LG, Huawei, Lenovo, ZTE, TCL, and Anker, with many earlier suits filed in the Eastern and Northern Districts of Texas. All facts on the merits of the Delaware case remain unresolved in the data available here.