Defendant
1 case as defendant.
I'll research this entity, which appears from the case name to be an individual rather than a company.
Note on entity type: "Ronald C. Fritz" is an individual person, not a corporation — the case data (1 case, 0 as plaintiff, 1 as defendant) reflects a natural person named in litigation, not a company.
Who he is. Ronald C. Fritz (March 25, 1937 – March 6, 2024) was an American entrepreneur and the founder of Identatronics, an identification-card business incorporated in 1973 in the Chicago area (originally 425 Lively Blvd., Elk Grove Village, IL; later 2510 Route 176, Crystal Lake, IL). This linkage comes from a published obituary crediting him with creating Identatronics and from the litigation record, which names "Ronald C. Fritz and Identatronics, Inc." as co-defendants. I could not independently verify his net worth, personal holdings, or any other business interests.
The related operating company. Identatronics, Inc. is a private manufacturer of credential/ID products: photo ID cards and badges, magnetic-stripe and barcode badges, card materials, laminators, die cutters, cameras, encoders, and the vIDix software suite (photo ID, access control, visitor management). Third-party directories estimate 21–50 employees and roughly $1–5M in annual revenue; those figures are unverified estimates, not filed financials. In 2001 the company was acquired by Ban-Koe Companies.
Litigation posture. Fritz has no plaintiff-side patent cases in the data. His single tracked appearance is defensive: Laminex, Inc. v. Ronald C. Fritz et al., in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division (389 F. Supp. 369, 1974). This is the profile of an operating-business defendant, not an NPE asserting an acquired portfolio.
Case context. Laminex, a competing maker of identification-card materials, sued Fritz and Identatronics for infringement of the Hannon '171 and '497 patents covering laminated plastic identification cards and card-pack materials. The court found no infringement on several grounds — including that the defendants merely purchased the core material rather than performing claimed process steps, and that their products lacked the claimed "protective envelope" and matching melt-index bonding layers.
Sources: obituary (nifsinc.com); Laminex, Inc. v. Fritz, 389 F. Supp. 369 (N.D. Ill. 1974) via CourtListener; Identatronics company listings (Salary.com, ThomasNet, sourcesecurity.com).
Laminex, Inc. sued Ronald C. Fritz and Identatronics, Inc. for infringement of US 3,417,497 and US 3,413,171 in the Northern District of Illinois. The court found no infringement of the '497 patent, held the '497 patent invalid, and entered judgment for defendants; related non-patent claims were settled and resolved by a Rule 54(b) partial final judgment on December 17, 1973.