Defendant
1 case as defendant.
I'll research this company before writing the profile.
Overview. Zenni Optical, LLC (commonly "Zenni") is a privately held online eyewear retailer headquartered at 150 Alameda del Prado, Novato, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was founded in 2003 by scientists including CEO Tibor Laczay. The company is not publicly traded and, per a 2018 Forbes profile, reported having never raised outside capital. Size estimates vary by source: headcount trackers put it near 400–500 employees, while NetSuite's customer case study and other vendor profiles cite roughly 1,000–4,000 employees, largely reflecting manufacturing and fulfillment staff. Revenue is not disclosed; third-party estimates cluster around $300–400 million annually (Craft.co ~$329M for 2020; NetSuite/Glossy ~$400M for 2021–2022), figures that should be treated as estimates rather than audited results.
Products and operations. Zenni is a vertically integrated direct-to-consumer optical business: it designs frames, produces them at company-owned facilities (mostly in China, with a growing U.S. manufacturing/fulfillment site in Obetz, Ohio), grinds lenses, and ships directly to consumers, bypassing optical retail markups. Product lines include prescription eyeglasses, prescription and non-prescription sunglasses, blue-light-filtering lenses (Blokz), sports and protective eyewear, goggles, and accessory items, with complete prescription pairs advertised starting under $10. The company has reported selling more than 70 million frames worldwide. It is an operating company, not a non-practicing entity.
Litigation posture. The tracked docket shows Zenni solely as a defendant (0 plaintiff suits, 1 defendant suit), consistent with an operating company defending product-infringement claims rather than a patent assertor. The single tracked matter was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida — not an NPE-heavy venue like the Eastern District of Texas.
Notable case. Aspex Eyewear, Inc. et al. v. Zenni Optical, LLC (No. 09-cv-61468, S.D. Fla., Judge Zloch) accused Zenni's rimless magnetic clip-on sunglasses of infringing U.S. Patents 5,737,054, 6,012,811, and 6,092,896, owned by Taiwan's Contour Optik with Aspex Eyewear as exclusive U.S. licensee. The district court granted summary judgment for Zenni on collateral estoppel grounds in 2012, citing Aspex's earlier losing litigation against Altair Eyewear over materially identical products; the Federal Circuit affirmed on April 19, 2013 (713 F.3d 1377), and the Supreme Court denied certiorari.
Sources: Zenni Optical corporate site and press releases; Crustdata; Craft.co; NetSuite customer profile; Forbes (2018); Federal Circuit opinion, Aspex Eyewear, Inc. v. Zenni Optical LLC, 713 F.3d 1377 (Fed. Cir. 2013); Finnegan "Last Month at the Federal Circuit" (May 2013).
Plaintiffs sought a permanent injunction against infringement of US 5,737,054, 6,012,811, and 6,092,896. The district court held Aspex collaterally estopped by the Altair litigation; the Federal Circuit affirmed (12-1318).