Defendant
1 case as defendant.
IKO Industries, Inc. is the U.S. operating entity of the IKO group, a private, family-owned building-products manufacturer. The group traces its founding to 1951 in Calgary, Alberta, when Isidore Koschitzky began producing building paper; asphalt shingle production followed in 1954. Corporate headquarters are in Brampton, Ontario, and the U.S. entity is registered in Wilmington, Delaware. IKO is privately held (no ticker) and remains family-owned; company materials cite roughly 3,500 employees and more than 35 plants worldwide, with 15 in North America. Revenue is not publicly disclosed; third-party estimates vary and are not reliable. Sources are the company's own history/About pages, its press releases, and Indeed/Glassdoor/Investment Monitor profiles.
Products / operations. IKO manufactures and sells residential and commercial roofing, waterproofing, and insulation products. Core lines include asphalt shingles (e.g., Dynasty, Nordic, Cambridge brands), rolled roofing, modified bitumen (APP and SBS) membranes, single-ply TPO membranes, polyisocyanurate insulation and cover boards, waterproofing and air/vapor barrier membranes, and stone-coated metal roofing (IKO Metals). It is vertically integrated, processing its own asphalt and mineral materials, and exports to roughly 96 countries.
Patent-litigation posture. IKO is an operating company, not a patent owner asserting rights. In the tracked data it appears once, as a defendant and never as plaintiff, which is the classic profile of a manufacturer targeted by a non-practicing entity. The single suit was filed in the plaintiff-friendly Western District of Texas (Waco Division).
Notable case. Kirsch Research & Development, LLC v. IKO Industries, Inc. et al., No. 6:20-cv-00317-ADA (W.D. Tex., filed April 24, 2020), accused IKO's synthetic roofing underlayment products of infringing U.S. Patent No. 6,308,482. Kirsch, a Simi Valley, California entity (listed as an individual-inventor-started asserter in Stanford's NPE database), filed roughly 15 other suits the same day plus an ITC complaint (Inv. No. 337-TA-1202). The '482 patent was later cancelled in inter partes review (IPR2021-00192), a decision affirmed by the Federal Circuit in May 2024; the IKO case closed in October 2021.
Kirsch asserted the '482 patent against IKO. A claim-construction order issued in 2021, and the case was stayed pending IPR; related IPR2022-00416 was denied institution on 2022-05-20.