Laminex, Inc.

Laminex, Inc. is a privately held U.S. manufacturer of plastic identification cards, badges, and lamination products. The company traces its founding to 1946 and today is headquartered in Greenwood, South Carolina, with additional operations in Fort Mill, SC, and Roswell, GA. It is the parent of ID Shop (founded 1981; the two merged in 2001) and markets under the Laminex, ID Shop, and CredentialExpress brands. Third-party business-data sources put headcount in the roughly 11–50 employee band, with revenue estimates in the low single-digit millions (about $4.9M–$8.6M); these are private-vendor estimates, not audited figures. Note that this U.S. entity is distinct from Laminex Australia/New Zealand, the decorative-surfaces business (a Fletcher Building unit) that shares the name but is unrelated.

Products and operations. Laminex manufactures custom-printed plastic cards and photo-ID badges, including contactless RFID and smart-chip credentials, key fobs, and other access-control tokens, plus time-and-attendance and visitor-management cards. It produces badge accessories (printed fabric lanyards, vinyl badge holders, retractable reels, SkimSAFE RFID-blocking products) and sells laminators, wide-roll and pouch lamination film, and desktop card-production equipment. It also acts as a value-added reseller/integrator for brands such as HID Global and Zebra.

Litigation posture. Laminex is an operating company, not a non-practicing entity. The tracked data show 1 case as plaintiff and 0 as defendant, consistent with a manufacturer that has occasionally enforced its own patents rather than a party defending against assertion campaigns. The sole tracked suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division — the parties' home forum, not a plaintiff-friendly patent venue such as the Eastern District of Texas.

Notable case. Laminex, Inc. v. Ronald C. Fritz and Identatronics, Inc. (N.D. Ill.), decided at 389 F. Supp. 369 (1974), was a patent-infringement action in which Laminex asserted the Hannon '171 and '497 patents covering laminated ID-card structures and roll-lamination processes against a competitor and an individual. The defendants counterclaimed; the court found no infringement. The opinion is frequently cited on anticipation, prior-art priority, and the burden of proving an earlier invention date.