LYKSTAGE, the creator-first video platform live across the UAE, US, UK, Canada, and India, has been granted U.S. Patent No. 12,684,189 for a watch-time model that rewards both creators and viewers from the value their attention creates.
On July 14, 2026, the United States Patent and Trademark Office issued U.S. Patent No. 12,684,189 – “Watch time units and the reward share mechanism for a user-generated video sharing platform” – to LYK Inc., the company behind LYKSTAGE, naming founder Adris Chakraborty as inventor. The grant formally protects the architecture at the heart of the platform.
The patented model rethinks a decades-old assumption of online video: that viewers, whose attention generates all advertising revenue, should receive nothing for it. LYKSTAGE distributes that value differently. It defines the Watch-Time Unit – every 30 seconds of genuine, uninterrupted viewing – as its foundational economic unit. Watch time accumulates as a viewer stays engaged, and it becomes monetized when an ad served during that viewing is watched in full, generating real advertising revenue.
That revenue is then shared. Creators receive a tiered share that starts at 45% and rises automatically to 70% as their content reaches more unique viewers. Logged-in viewers receive a share of eligible monetized watch time, paid in LYK Coins that carry a real US dollar value. Crucially, the creator’s share is allocated first – the viewer’s reward never reduces the creator’s earnings.
“Advertisers pay for one thing: attention, and that attention comes from viewers,” said Chakraborty. “Almost everyone told us this model could not work – that viewers should not be economic participants, or that the mechanism could not be protected. Today, the USPTO has formally recognized it as a novel invention. This milestone belongs to every creator and viewer who trusted the model before it had a number attached.”
Image supplied by LYKSTAGE
The grant is especially relevant to the UAE, home to one of the world’s most connected, multicultural audiences and a significant South Asian diaspora community. Because the value of monetized watch time reflects the ad rates of the market where the viewer is located, the model has proven powerful for regional-language creators: content watched by diaspora audiences in higher ad-rate markets can generate greater value than domestic viewing alone. For creators in the region producing content in languages spoken across the Gulf and South Asia, LYKSTAGE’s presence in five markets opens diaspora reach from a single upload.
A defining feature of the model is that every reward is funded by real advertising revenue generated by the viewing itself – not by promotional funds, token issuance, or investor subsidy. The design echoes the interchange model behind credit card rewards: value is shared back with the people whose activity created it, which is what makes the rewards structurally sustainable rather than dependent on outside funding.
The patent arrives as LYKSTAGE operates across the US, UK, Canada, the UAE, and India, with more than one million people having experienced the platform and over 20,000 creator channels – a base built with very minimal marketing spend. The platform is available across eight device types: mobile, web, and six Connected TV platforms including Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung TV, and LG TV. Unlike traditional platforms, LYKSTAGE has no subscriber threshold, so creators earn from their very first video.
LYKSTAGE is operated by LYK Inc., a Delaware corporation. Learn more at www.lykstage.com.
