Defendant
1 case as defendant.
I'll verify this company's profile through web searches.
Crackle, Inc. — commonly known simply as Crackle (branded Sony Crackle from 2018 to 2019) — is a U.S. streaming-video company founded in 2004 as Grouper by Josh Felser, Mike Sitrin, David Samuel, and Aviv Eyal. It was acquired by Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2006 and headquartered on the Sony lot at 10202 W. Washington Blvd., Culver City, California. Sony sold a majority stake to Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment (CSSE) in March 2019 and exited entirely in December 2020, making Crackle, Inc. part of the CSSE group alongside Crackle Plus, LLC. I could not verify employee counts or revenue for the Crackle entity itself from primary sources; aggregator figures are unreliable and not reproduced here.
Products / services. Crackle operated a free, ad-supported video-on-demand (AVOD) service offering licensed films and TV series plus "Crackle Original" programming. Its parent's Crackle Plus subsidiary also ran Popcornflix, Truli, and the Pivotshare SVOD platform, and CSSE launched the Crackle Connex ad-sales division in 2023. Crackle is no longer an operating service: CSSE filed Chapter 11 in June 2024, converted to Chapter 7 liquidation in July 2024, and Crackle's site went dark in 2025. Its trademarks and content assets were slated for an April 2025 foreclosure auction; reported buyer details were not confirmed in a primary source.
Patent-litigation posture. Operating company defending against an NPE suit. The case data show 0 plaintiff cases and 1 defendant case — the classic profile of a practicing company being attacked, not an asserter. Venue was the District of Delaware, not the Eastern District of Texas.
Notable case. Helios Streaming, LLC et al. v. Crackle, Inc. et al., No. 1:19-cv-01818 (D. Del., filed Sept. 27, 2019). Co-defendants included Crackle Plus, LLC, CSSE, Sony Pictures Television, Inc., and Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc. Plaintiffs Helios (exclusive licensee) and Ideahub (owner) asserted roughly ten patents covering MPEG-DASH adaptive-bitrate streaming, with development originating at Korea's ETRI and licensing revenue shared with ETRI, Intellectual Discovery, and investor Korea Patent Investment Corporation. Parallel DASH litigation was filed against Walmart's Vudu. Claims were pled as subject to FRAND obligations.
Patent infringement suit in which U.S. Patent No. 8,645,562 was listed among the asserted patents. Docket databases show the case closed/terminated, but the specific final outcome was not confirmed.