CP Studios LLC has sued Amazon (Twitch Interactive) (1:25-cv-01542) in the District of Delaware over the provision of the Twitch platform and related products, including "Twitch.tv, the Twitch Mobile App, Twitch Studio, Twitch Bits, Twitch Turbo, [and] associated Twitch servers and subscriptions". At issue are features for "allowing viewers to affect gameplay" of a video game through the Twitch platform. Four patents broadly directed to various aspects of video gaming technologies are now in suit.
Those patents (9,604,132; 9,889,373; 10,632,388; 11,731,054) belong to seven-member family with issue dates ranging from March 2017 through June 2025. The family has earliest estimated priority in May 2012, based on the filing of a provisional application. Prosecution of at least one related application (filed in May 2025) continues before the USPTO. The family's named inventors are Brian Joseph Wiklem and Carrie Ann Cowan, both of Salt Lake City, Utah.
On social media, Wiklem identifies several current positions: since February 2015, the "Director – CG, Video, and Virtual Reality Production" with izmocars (described as "[d]riving the latest in automotive video, CGI, and virtual reality content production"); since January 2018, founder of avgeektv (as "[a]viation video and film production + streaming media service for aviation 'geeks' (like [him]self) with exclusive content in commercial aviation, military, general aviation"); and since January 2014, "Preditor" with I Speed on the 405 Productions (as a "[v]ideo production services company"). Around the priority date for the asserted family, Wiklem reports that he was the founder and CEO of Checkpoint Studios Inc., a gaming company.
Wiklem and Cowan assigned the family to Checkpoint Studios in September 2013, Checkpoint Studios moving the assets to CP Studios in December 2013. That CP Studios is a Delaware entity, formed in that state on November 8, 2013. Cowan reports a host of marketing positions, both before and after the 2010-2012 stint with Checkpoint Studios as "Startup Co-Founder & VP Marketing". She indicates that during that time, she "[c]o-authored 5 registered patents for proprietary technologies designed for Cloud and Social-based gaming platforms and applications". Since July 2024, she appears to have been self-employed as a "Fractional Marketing Leader, GTM Advisor".
The current plaintiff—CP Studios, LLC (with a comma)—pleads that it is a Utah entity. It discloses that it has not parent and that no publicly held corporation owns ten percent or more of the interest in it. State records confirm formation of a CP Studios, LLC (with a comma) there in November 2024. No transfer of the asserted patents from the Delaware CP Studios LLC (no comma) to the Utah CP Studios, LLC (with a comma) yet appears in publicly available USPTO records. The latter, however, pleads ownership.
CP Studios pleads extensively against a patent eligibility challenge as well as that the alleged infringement has been willful, contending that its counsel sent a letter to Twitch as early as November 2018 over its patents (specifically, the '132 and '373 patents). Folio Law Group PLLC (out of Seattle, Washington) and Farnan LLP represent the plaintiff. The case has yet to be assigned to a judge. 12/19, District of Delaware.
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