Defendant
1 case as defendant.
E'Lite Optik, Inc. is a privately held U.S. eyewear company organized in Texas, with its principal place of business historically in the Dallas area and operations at 3200 Earhart Drive, Carrollton, Texas (a related partnership entity, E'Lite Optik US, L.P., was established in 1995). It is not publicly traded and no parent company is identified in public sources. Third-party business directories estimate roughly 55 employees and about $6.4 million in annual revenue, but these are unverified directory estimates rather than audited figures; the company does not publish financials, and no reliable headcount or revenue data from a primary source was found.
The company wholesales ophthalmic frames and sunglasses, including magnetic clip-on and auxiliary-frame products. Court filings in its litigation reference its "Smart Clip" and "Mac Eye" frame lines, and trademark records for E'Lite Optik US, L.P. list marks such as SMARTFLIP, CLIPTONITE, DECO CLIP, VISOR CLIP and INTELLI-CLIP covering eyeglasses, primary and magnetic secondary frames, replacement lenses and cases. Import records show it sourcing sunglass cases and eyewear from Chinese suppliers. It is an operating company, not a patent assertion entity: its product lines are the subject of the infringement claims against it.
Litigation posture: E'Lite appears in the tracked data only as a defendant (0 plaintiff cases, 1 defendant case), which is the signature of an operating company targeted by patent holders rather than an NPE. The sole tracked matter is Aspex Eyewear, Inc. et al. v. E'Lite Optik, Inc., filed September 15, 2000 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada — not a plaintiff-friendly Texas venue. Plaintiffs Aspex Eyewear (Florida) and Contour Optik (Taiwan) asserted magnetic-eyewear patents, including U.S. Patent Nos. 6,012,811 ('811) and the '054 and '207 patents, and E'Lite litigated the case through claim construction, summary judgment, discovery and an advice-of-counsel defense.
Context: The Nevada case produced appellate law: the Federal Circuit in Aspex Eyewear, Inc. v. E'Lite Optik, Inc., 127 F. App'x 493 (Fed. Cir. 2005), affirmed dismissal of Aspex's claims, holding Aspex lacked standing because its license covered only then-owned, not future-acquired, patents. Public records also show parallel Canadian proceedings brought by Contour Optik against E'Lite and a later Texas state-court judgment matter involving Contour.
Plaintiffs asserted the '811 patent (Count I). The district court granted summary judgment dismissing Aspex's claims for lack of standing as to the '054 and '811 patents; the Federal Circuit affirmed (04-1292), holding the '811 retaining mechanism was a means-plus-function limitation limited to rims.