The Hallicrafters Company manufactured, marketed, and sold radio equipment beginning in 1932. The company was based in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
William J. Halligan founded his own radio manufacturing company in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 in late 1932. Prior to this, he had been involved in radio parts sales for some years but decided that the time was right for a handcrafted amateur radio

Amateur radio

Amateur radio is the use of designated radio frequency spectrum for purposes of private recreation, non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, and emergency communication...

 receiver - the company name being a combination of Halli(gan) and (hand)crafters.

The new company was located at 417 State Street and immediately ran into patent

Patent

A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....

 difficulties when RCA

RCA

RCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...

 decided to sue them for building radio sets without an RCA patent license.