JiMi IP, LLC et al. v. Funcity Adventure Park, LLC

I'll research this case across multiple sources before drafting the overview.

Good initial data. Now let me verify party identities, the assertion campaign, and any PTAB activity.

Now let me check the assertion campaign history, PTAB proceedings, and the specific Funcity park.

Case Overview & Background

Parties. The two plaintiffs are related but functionally distinct. JiMi IP, LLC is the patent-holding/assertion entity that appears as the record owner of the asserted patents (patent-office records list JiMi IP, LLC as owner of the "Zip track and system" / "Zip line rail system" family — see OnScope owner profile). Ropes Courses, Inc. ("RCI") is the operating company — founded in 1989 in Allegan, Michigan and now doing business as RCI Adventure Products — which manufactures, installs and services harnessed aerial attractions, principally the Sky Trail® high-ropes course, the Sky Rail® rigid zip line that integrates into it, Sky Tykes® (kids' course), CTS zip lines, climbing walls and mazes (RCI product history, RCI corporate profile). RCI's founder, Jim Liggett, is listed as an inventor on several of the asserted-family patents, and the portfolio's named inventors include Liggett, Sean Horihan, Troy Garland and others. Caveat: the exact ownership/license structure (i.e., whether JiMi IP holds title with RCI as exclusive licensee) is an inference from the patent-office ownership records and the two-plaintiff configuration; I found no court filing that spells it out. The sole defendant, Funcity Adventure Park, LLC, is an operator of a commercial adventure park in Algonquin, Illinois; the complaint identifies the accused instrumentalities simply as the park's "Ropes Course" and "Zipline" attractions — multi-level structures with an overhead steel track from which participants are suspended by lanyard/puck assemblies (Compl. ¶¶26–31, as summarized in the complaint analysis). This is a notable structural quirk of the case: the plaintiff group pairs a manufacturer (RCI) with its IP-holding affiliate (JiMi IP) and points the assertion downstream at an end-user/operating park rather than at a competing equipment maker — a customer-facing enforcement posture that is atypical of both classic NPE practice and classic competitor-vs-competitor manufacturing disputes. Reports that the accused systems are RCI-branded "Sky Trail®/Sky Rail®" installations (see PatSnap case note) would, if accurate, suggest the friction arose out of a commercial/installation relationship rather than a knockoff — but I could not verify that characterization against the complaint itself, and it should be treated as unconfirmed.

The asserted patents and technology. Three patents from RCI's aerial-adventure family were asserted (Exhibits A–C to the June 24, 2024 complaint): (1) U.S. 8,066,578 B2, "Challenge course" (App. 11/649,065, ~2007 priority, issued 2011) — the foundational patent covering an elevated challenge course with a frame, a track receiving a moveable member, horizontally oriented platforms, obstacles and a safety cable to which a participant is tethered; (2) U.S. 10,478,737 B2, "Zip track and system" (App. 16/282,647, filed Feb. 22, 2019, issued Nov. 19, 2019) — covering a zip track integrally connected to a challenge-course "puck track," with the zip track's wheel support positioned vertically lower than the puck track's support so a single moveable body (puck plus rolling member) transitions from the challenge course onto the zip line without unhooking; and (3) U.S. 11,376,513 B2, "Zip track and system" (App. 16/683,458, filed Nov. 14, 2019, issued July 5, 2022) — a continuation refining that same puck-track/zip-track overlap geometry. Per the complaint summary, plaintiffs asserted independent claim 1 of the '578 patent, independent claim 10 of the '737 patent, and independent claim 1 of the '513 patent. The portfolio also includes related patents (e.g., 10,213,699; 11,400,383; 11,786,830) that were not asserted here.

Procedural posture and venue. Filed June 24, 2024 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division (Chicago), case 1:24-cv-05275, assigned randomly to Judge Sunil R. Harjani, with Magistrate Judge David Weisman designated; the docket codes the case as a § 830 patent action and (somewhat oddly) lists the cause of action as 15 U.S.C. § 1126, which appears to be a docketing artifact rather than a Lanham Act claim (Justia docket). Plaintiff's counsel are William F. Dolan and Patricia Y. Ho of FisherBroyles LLP; defendant's counsel are George P. Apostolides and Joseph Ming Kuo of Saul Ewing LLP (per PatSnap's party table, which I could not independently confirm against PACER). Venue is straightforward and proper: the accused attractions are physically operated in Algonquin (McHenry County), within the Northern District and the Eastern Division, and N.D. Ill. is a high-volume, patent-experienced venue. The early docket shows a summons returned unexecuted as to all defendants on August 20, 2024 (Dkt. 7) and an initial status hearing initially set for September 11, 2024 — indicating service/engagement difficulties early on — before the case was terminated April 25, 2025 (Docket Alarm). Termination came by joint stipulation under Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(1)(A)(ii) (Dkt. 35), dismissing all claims and counterclaims without prejudice, each side bearing its own fees and costs, with the express proviso that "[u]nless either party has initiated a pending enforcement proceeding within 90 days of the date of this Stipulation," the action converts automatically to a dismissal with prejudice without further court order. The stipulation also references "the terms of a separate agreement" — a confidential settlement/license of some kind — so the practical outcome is a negotiated business resolution, not a ruling.

Why it matters / what's notable. Three things stand out. First, there is no merits adjudication — no claim construction, no invalidity or infringement ruling, no injunction or damages — so the '578/'737/'513 patents emerge from this case with their scope and validity completely untested, and the dismissal's convert-to-prejudice condition means the patents' enforceability against Funcity depends on the terms of that undisclosed agreement rather than on any court decision. Second, this appears to be a portfolio-wide licensing-by-litigation campaign rather than a one-off suit: the same JiMi IP / RCI plaintiff pairing has continued to file, e.g., JiMi IP, LLC et al. v. WA7 Volli (W.D. Wash., No. 2:26-cv-03272), with FisherBroyles again appearing for plaintiffs (PACER Monitor) — suggesting the Funcity dismissal is one node in a broader assertion program against park operators, consistent with an operating manufacturer using an affiliated holding entity plus customer-directed suits to convert unlicensed installations into licenses. Third, on the IPR side I found no PTAB proceeding (no IPR/PGR) against the '578, '737, or '513 patents in the searches run for this report; that is a negative finding from limited searching, not a certified "none exists," and PTAB activity should be re-checked against the PTAB docket. I likewise found no Reuters Legal, Law360, IPWatchdog, Patently-O, RPX or Unified Patents coverage of this case, which is unsurprising given its size (a single park, no damages claim litigated) — the primary documentation is the PACER docket itself plus third-party litigation-intelligence summaries (PatSnap, Docket Alarm, Justia, Ex Parte's AI complaint analysis), whose party tables and complaint characterizations I was unable to cross-verify against PACER/EDIS. Market context: the underlying industry is the commercial aerial adventure/ropes-course sector — a niche but growing category of outdoor and retail-entertainment attractions (RCI advertises installations across 25 countries on five continents) — where the competitive moat is largely the integrated continuous-belay track architecture these patents claim.

I'll research this case across multiple sources. Let me start with broad searches.

Let me dig into the docket details, PTAB proceedings, and related litigation.

Key Legal Developments & Outcome — JiMi IP, LLC et al. v. Funcity Adventure Park, LLC, No. 1:24-cv-05275 (N.D. Ill.)

Bottom line: This was a short-lived, single-defendant patent infringement action that terminated by joint stipulated dismissal under Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(1)(A)(ii) on 2025-04-25, roughly ten months after filing. There was no merits ruling on infringement, invalidity, or claim construction — no Markman, no dispositive motions, no trial. Sourcing note: the full PACER docket is not freely available; the most recent public docket snapshot I retrieved (Justia) stops at 2024-08-20, so the intermediate pleadings are partly reconstructed from a litigation-intelligence summary rather than primary documents. I flag each such item below.

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1. Filing & initial pleadings

• 2024-06-24 — Complaint (Dkt. 1). Filed by JiMi IP, LLC and Ropes Courses, Inc. ("RCI") against Funcity Adventure Park, LLC, asserting three patents against the "Ropes Course" and "Zipline" attractions at Funcity's Algonquin, Illinois adventure park:
  • US 8,066,578 B2 ("Challenge course") — asserted Claim 1
  • US 10,478,737 B2 ("Zip track and system") — asserted Claim 10
  • US 11,376,513 B2 ("Zip track and system") — asserted Claim 1
  • Attachments: Exhibits A–C (the three patents). Plaintiff demanded a jury. Cause of action pleaded as 15 U.S.C. § 1126 patent infringement; Nature of Suit 830.
• 2024-06-24/25 — Ancillary filings. Civil cover sheet (Dkt. 2), Local Rule 3.2 notification of affiliates (Dkt. 3), and Local Rule 3.4 notice of filing claims involving patents (Dkt. 4).
• 2024-06-25 — Case assignment & appearance. Case assigned to Magistrate Judge Sunil R. Harjani (with Magistrate Judge David Weisman designated; case flags included "WEISMAN"). William F. Dolan entered his appearance for Plaintiffs (Dkt. 6).
• 2024-06-25 — Initial status order (Dkt. 5). Initial status hearing set for 2024-09-11 by telephone; joint status report due 2024-09-04. The docket also contains the standard Local Rule 73.1(b) notice inviting consent to magistrate-judge jurisdiction (the "TERMED"/"WEISMAN" flags are consistent with the case proceeding before the magistrate judge).
• Answer / counterclaims — NOT INDEPENDENTLY VERIFIED. The public docket snapshot I could retrieve ends at Dkt. 7. However, the dismissal stipulation expressly resolves "all of the claims by RCI against Funcity and by Funcity against RCI," which confirms there were cross-claims/counterclaims by Funcity on the docket by the time of dismissal. I could not retrieve the answer or the specific counterclaim counts (a validity/non-infringement counterclaim would be typical). This is a documentation gap, not a confirmed fact about content.

2. Pre-trial motions of substance

• None on the public record. No motion to dismiss, motion to transfer, motion to stay pending IPR, or summary judgment motion appears in the retrievable docket. The case resolved too early for any of these to have been briefed or decided.
• Service complication (strategically notable): 2024-08-20 — "SUMMONS Returned Unexecuted by JiMi IP, LLC as to All Defendants" (Dkt. 7). The only substantive pre-dismissal event visible on the public docket is a return of service unexecuted — i.e., the plaintiffs had not perfected service on Funcity roughly two months after filing. This likely explains the ten-month gap between filing and termination and suggests the case was never fully joined on the merits. (I could not confirm whether substituted service or an appearance/waiver followed.)

3. Claim construction (Markman)

• Did not occur. The case was dismissed before any scheduling order, joint claim construction statement, or Markman hearing. No claim terms were construed by the court.

4. Discovery milestones

• No discovery milestones of record. No scheduling order, no infringement/invalidity contentions, no expert reports, and no discovery motions are reflected in the retrievable docket. Given the early dismissal, discovery almost certainly never commenced in a meaningful way.

5. Trial, verdict & post-trial motions

• None. No trial date, verdict, JMOL, new-trial motion, or fee motion. The complaint's jury demand was never realized.

6. Settlement / dismissal — final disposition

• 2025-04-25 — Stipulated dismissal (Dkt. 35), terminating the case. Per the stipulation (quoted from the PACER record):

  "Pursuant to Dkt. #35, Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(ii) … and the terms of a separate agreement, Plaintiffs JiMi IP, LLC and Ropes Courses, Inc. ("RCI") and Defendant Funcity Adventure Park LLC ("Funcity") … hereby stipulate and agree that this action, including all of the claims by RCI against Funcity and by Funcity against RCI, are dismissed without prejudice, with each party to bear its own attorneys' fees and costs. Unless either party has initiated a pending enforcement proceeding within 90 days of the date of this Stipulation, the parties further stipulate and agree to dismiss this action with prejudice, without further order of the Court …"

• Key terms:

  • Without prejudice initially, with each side bearing its own fees and costs (no prevailing party, hence no fee-shifting under 35 U.S.C. § 285).
  • Conditional conversion to with prejudice if no "enforcement proceeding" is initiated within 90 days. The reference to a "separate agreement" (confidential) plus the conditional-conversion clause signals a business resolution — e.g., a license or coexistence arrangement — rather than an unconditional abandonment.
  • No injunction, no damages, no consent judgment, no merits findings.

• Present posture: Terminated/closed. Whether the dismissal formally converted to with prejudice after the 90-day window (~2025-07-24) is not publicly confirmed in the sources retrieved.

7. Parallel PTAB (IPR/PGR) proceedings

• None identified. I found no IPR, PGR, or CBM petition against US 8,066,578, US 10,478,737, or US 11,376,513 in connection with this case (or otherwise). Accordingly, there was no stay motion and no PTAB estoppel at play; the termination was driven by the parties' agreement, not by any administrative challenge. (Caveat: absence of evidence in the retrieved sources — I could not run a full PTAB docket query on the three patent numbers, so this should be treated as "not found," not affirmatively disproven.)

8. Related / continuing enforcement activity (context)

• The same three patents are being asserted anew by JiMi IP, LLC and Ropes Courses in JiMi IP, LLC et al. v. WA7 Volli, No. 2:26-cv-03272 (W.D. Wash., before Magistrate Judge Grady J. Leupold), filed September 2026. The complaint's exhibits are the same three patents (US 8,066,578; US 10,478,737; US 11,376,513). Plaintiff's counsel is again FisherBroyles LLP (Jeremy Sanders as local counsel; Patricia Y. Ho admitted pro hac vice; William F. Dolan appeared in the Funcity matter). This confirms an ongoing assertion campaign by JiMi IP/RCI and undercuts any read that the Funcity dismissal reflected a withdrawal of the patents from enforcement.
• Ownership/assignment backdrop: USPTO assignment records show Ropes Courses, Inc. → JiMi IP, LLC transfers recorded 2020-04-10 (Reel/Frame 052654/0330), consistent with JiMi IP as the current owner/asserting entity and RCI as the original innovator/co-plaintiff.

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Summary timeline

Confidence & sourcing notes

• High confidence: filing date, court, judge, patents, parties, counsel, and the 2025-04-25 dismissal-without-prejudice stipulation with the 90-day conversion term — corroborated across Justia, Docket Alarm, PacerMonitor, and the PatSnap summary quoting the PACER docket.
• Lower confidence / unverified: existence and content of Funcity's answer and counterclaims; whether the dismissal converted to with-prejudice; the specifics of the confidential "separate agreement." The PatSnap litigation summary I relied on for the stipulation text is a third-party/AI-aggregated source, so the quoted language should ideally be confirmed against the primary PACER document (Dkt. 35).
• Most useful next steps for a fuller record: pull the full PACER docket for 1:24-cv-05275 (Dkts. 8–36) to capture the answer, counterclaims, scheduling activity, and the 90-day conversion status; and run a PTAB docket search on the three patent numbers to definitively rule IPR/PGR in or out.

I'll research the docket and counsel appearances for this case.

Let me verify counsel details and firm affiliations.

Let me check the full docket and the stipulation of dismissal signature blocks.

Counsel of Record for Plaintiffs JiMi IP, LLC and Ropes Courses, Inc.

Bottom line: The plaintiffs' representation in this case ran through FisherBroyles LLP — a distributed/virtual national firm. Two attorneys are associated with the plaintiffs' side in PACER-derived sources: William F. Dolan (the only attorney whose formal appearance I can confirm on this docket) and Patricia Y. "Patty" Ho. No in-house counsel and no separate Illinois "local counsel" firm appear on the public docket.

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1. William F. Dolan — Lead counsel of record (confirmed)

Sources: https://dockets.justia.com/docket/illinois/ilndce/1:2024cv05275/[460601](/patent/460601) · https://fisherbroyles.com/news/fisherbroyles-welcomes-william-dolan/ · https://fisherbroyles.com/people/william-dolan/ · https://www.law360.com/firms/fisherbroyles/attorneys/william-f-dolan

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2. Patricia Y. "Patty" Ho — Counsel for plaintiffs (well corroborated, but see caveat)

Caveat — please note: The most recent free docket snapshot I could retrieve for this case runs only through August 20, 2024, and it shows no separate appearance entry for Ho in N.D. Ill. Because the case ran until termination on April 25, 2025 (Docket Alarm), it is likely — but not something I could verify — that she entered an appearance or signed the later filings (including the Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(ii) stipulation at Dkt. 35/36). Treat her as counsel for plaintiffs in the matter, but not as conclusively "of record" on this docket based on publicly retrievable entries. I did not find the signature blocks of the final dismissal stipulation through open sources.

Sources: https://fisherbroyles.com/people/patricia-ho/ · https://fisherbroyles.com/news/fisherbroyles-welcomes-patricia-patty-ho/ · https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/66752903/JiMi_IP,_LLC_et_al_v_WA7_Volli · https://www.patsnap.com/fr/resources/blog/litigation/jimi-ip-v-funcity-adventure-park-zip-track-aerial-park-patent-dispute-patsnap/

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3. What is not present on the record

• No in-house counsel identified for either JiMi IP, LLC or Ropes Courses, Inc. in any source I reviewed. JiMi IP appears to be a patent-holding/assertion entity and Ropes Courses the operating company, so in-house presence would be unlikely, but I cannot affirmatively rule it out.
• No separate Illinois local-counsel firm. FisherBroyles has Illinois-admitted partners (Dolan is on the N.D. Ill. Trial Bar), so the firm served as its own local anchor — this distinguishes the case from the W.D. Wash. action, where an out-of-state FisherBroyles attorney required a Washington-based co-counsel.
• Party-name discrepancy: the docket caption renders the co-plaintiff as "Rope Courses, Inc.," while the dismissal stipulation text quoted in PACER-derived sources uses "Ropes Courses, Inc. ('RCI')." Same entity, variant spelling.
• No sealing issue found: I did not encounter indication that counsel identification was under seal; the representational picture is simply thin because the case was short-lived (complaint June 2024 → unexecuted summons Aug. 2024 → stipulated dismissal April 2025).

For context — defendant's side (not the question, but relevant to the counsel landscape)

Funcity Adventure Park was represented by Saul Ewing LLP (Arnstein & Lehr), with George P. Apostolides and Joseph Ming Kuo appearing, per PatSnap's PACER-derived summary. I could not independently verify these entries against a primary docket snapshot.

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Confidence summary: Dolan (FisherBroyles, Chicago) as plaintiffs' counsel of record = high confidence (primary docket entries). Ho (FisherBroyles, Denver) as plaintiffs' counsel = moderate-to-high (two independent aggregators plus her appearance for the same plaintiffs in the parallel JiMi IP case, but no confirmed appearance entry in this specific docket). No in-house or separate local counsel = high confidence based on sources reviewed, with the caveat that free docket coverage stopped in August 2024.

I'll research the docket and counsel appearances in this case.

Let me verify the defendant's counsel through firm profiles and the docket.

Let me dig into the docket for defendant's appearance filings and any answer/counterclaim.

Counsel of Record for Defendant — Funcity Adventure Park, LLC

Bottom line: Both free and commercial docket sources identify Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr LLP as defense counsel, with two Chicago-based attorneys appearing for Funcity: Joseph M. Kuo (patent/IP counsel) and George P. Apostolides (business/litigation counsel). One important caveat up front: the free dockets (Justia, Docket Alarm) stop well before the 2025 termination, and the specific attorney-appearance docket entries (the "ATTORNEY Appearance for Defendant" filings) are not directly visible in the free sources I retrieved. The identification below rests primarily on the PACER-derived counsel table in PatSnap's Eureka litigation summary, which is corroborated by the case's procedural posture (Funcity asserted counterclaims against Ropes Courses — see the dismissal stipulation — meaning defense counsel necessarily appeared).

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Attorneys

1. Joseph M. Kuo — lead patent/IP counsel

• Firm / office: Saul Ewing LLP (formerly Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr LLP), 161 N. Clark Street, Suite 4200, Chicago, IL 60601.
• Role: Partner; Vice Chair of the firm's Intellectual Property Practice. Registered patent attorney (USPTO Reg. No. 38,943), admitted in Illinois and before the N.D. Ill., C.D. Ill., E.D. Mich., W.D. Wis., the Seventh Circuit, and the Federal Circuit.
• Relevant experience: Long-standing patent litigator and prosecutor; represented the patent owner in the BillJCo IPR cluster against Apple and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (presented at the April 2023 consolidated PTAB oral hearing in IPR2022-00310/00420/00426); prior career at Arnstein & Lehr and Olson & Cepuritis. This is the natural candidate for lead substantive counsel on the patent merits.

2. George P. Apostolides — lead litigation / trial counsel

• Firm / office: Saul Ewing LLP, Chicago (161 N. Clark Street, Suite 4200).
• Role: Partner; business and bankruptcy/commercial litigator, Vice Chair of the firm's Litigation Practice; former member of the firm's Executive Committee. Admitted in Illinois since 1995 (Northwestern J.D., 1995).
• Relevant experience: 25+ years of federal/state commercial litigation, jury trials, and Seventh Circuit arguments; named a Benchmark Litigation "Local Litigation Star" (Illinois) and repeatedly selected to Super Lawyers. His profile does not list patent specialization, suggesting he served as lead local/trial counsel alongside Kuo's IP expertise rather than as the patent-law specialist.

Not identified: No in-house counsel for Funcity Adventure Park appears in the sources reviewed; no separate local-counsel firm beyond Saul Ewing's own Chicago office is indicated.

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Sourcing notes and caveats

• Case facts: Filed June 24, 2024 (N.D. Ill., Judge Sunil R. Harjani); terminated April 25, 2025. Docket flags include "TERMED" and the magistrate designation (David Weisman). (Docket Alarm; Justia docket No. 1:2024cv05275/460601.)
• Early procedural wrinkle: The last free-docket snapshot (retrieved Aug. 20, 2024) shows no defendant appearance and Filing 7 — "SUMMONS Returned Unexecuted … as to All Defendants" — reflecting that service was initially not perfected. Defense counsel therefore appeared later than the free dockets capture. This is consistent with the case continuing into 2025 and terminating by stipulation.
• Dismissal stipulation: The Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(ii) stipulation recites that both plaintiffs (JiMi IP and Ropes Courses) and Funcity, "by and through their undersigned counsel," dismissed "all of the claims by RCI against Funcity and by Funcity against RCI" — confirming Funcity's counsel of record and that Funcity had asserted counterclaims. (PatSnap Eureka, quoting PACER Dkt. 35.)
• Confidence: The Saul Ewing attribution is well supported; the precise per-entry PACER appearance documents (docket numbers/dates) were not independently retrievable from the free sources, so the specific appearance dates and whether both attorneys formally entered under Rule 83.5/pro hac vice should be confirmed against the full PACER docket sheet.
• Firm name: PatSnap lists "Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr LLP." Note the firm has been branding as Saul Ewing LLP since the 2022 combination, so filings may show either name.