Ropes Courses

Company overview. Ropes Courses, Inc. (commonly "RCI," now marketing itself as RCI Adventure Products) is a privately held manufacturer based at 1300 Lincoln Rd, Allegan, Michigan. It was founded in 1989 by Jim Liggett and remains privately owned; no public ticker, parent company, or disclosed revenue/headcount figures could be verified. Company materials describe a roughly 100,000-square-foot fabrication facility. Founder Jim Liggett and Michelle Liggett also operate Liggettville, a separate family entertainment center venture that uses RCI equipment.

Products / operations. RCI designs, fabricates, installs, and services aerial adventure attractions. Its flagship line is the Sky Trail® continuous-overhead-track high ropes course, alongside Sky Rail® zip rails/tracks, Sky Tykes® low courses for young children, custom ropes courses, ninja-style obstacle courses, climbing walls, and Clip 'n Climb® walls. Installations span amusement parks, zoos, museums, malls, cruise ships, resorts, and family entertainment centers worldwide; the company also provides operator training and certification. This is a real operating manufacturer — not a non-practicing entity.

Patent-litigation posture. The tracked data show one case, with Ropes Courses as plaintiff and zero as defendant. That single case, JiMi IP, LLC et al. v. WA7 Volli (2:26-cv-03272, W.D. Wash., filed Feb. 11, 2026), names Ropes Courses as a co-plaintiff alongside JiMi IP, LLC. So RCI is best characterized as an operating company that asserts its own track-system patents through litigation, in partnership with an affiliated IP-holding/licensing entity (JiMi IP, described elsewhere as an aerial-adventure patent licensor). The venue is the Western District of Washington, not an EDTX-style plaintiff-friendly district.

Context. A prior, closely related suit — JiMi IP, LLC et al. v. Funcity Adventure Park, LLC (1:24-cv-05275, N.D. Ill., filed June 24, 2024) — paired the same plaintiffs (docketed there as "Rope Courses, Inc.") against an adventure park operator, asserting U.S. Patents 8,066,578, 10,478,737, and 11,376,513 covering overhead challenge-course tracks and integrated zip-track systems. That case was dismissed without prejudice by stipulation in August 2024. The identity and business of the defendant "WA7 Volli" could not be independently verified.