Vimar

Company overview. Vimar S.p.A. (commonly "Vimar") is a privately held Italian manufacturer of electrical and electronic equipment headquartered at Viale Vicenza 14, Marostica (Vicenza), Italy. It was founded on 1 May 1945 by Walter Viaro and Francesco Gusi; the name combines "Viaro" and "Marostica." It remains family-controlled, with Viaro S.r.l. listed as the ultimate shareholder, and is not publicly traded. Il Sole 24 Ore reported 2024 revenue of €317.4 million (up ~5% on 2023), and the company cites about 1,300 employees overall, roughly 1,100 of them in Italy (Italian registry data show ~1,108 direct employees in 2025). Wikipedia lists ~€313 million revenue and ~1,140 employees for 2025.

Products / services. Vimar designs and manufactures low-voltage electrical wiring devices and building-automation systems, with production concentrated in four plants in Marostica. Product lines include wiring series (cover plates, switches, socket outlets — sold under series names such as Elkon, Linea, Arké, Plana and Idea); smart-home and building automation (KNX-compatible systems controlled via its View app); video door entry and door entry systems (the Elvox business, fully acquired in December 2012); intruder alarm and video surveillance; and system infrastructure such as junction boxes, enclosures and structured cabling. The company reports over 200 patents filed and R&D spending of roughly 9% of revenue. It is an operating manufacturer, not an NPE.

Patent-litigation posture. Vimar appears once in the tracked data, as a defendant and never as a plaintiff — consistent with an operating company targeted by an assertion entity. The suit was Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Vimar SpA, No. 6:22-cv-00971, filed in the Western District of Texas before Judge Alan Albright (per the Stanford NPE Litigation Database). Cedar Lane is characterized by Unified Patents and the Stanford NPE database as a non-practicing entity that asserts acquired patents, largely former Intellectual Ventures assets.

Notable case context. Cedar Lane asserted two imaging-interface patents (US 6,972,790 and US 8,537,242). According to a PatSnap docket summary, Vimar never answered, and Cedar Lane voluntarily dismissed the action with prejudice under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i), with each side bearing its own costs; no merits or validity ruling issued. Venue was W.D. Tex.; the case is the only Vimar appearance in this dataset.