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Netflix Granted Patent on DVD Subscription Rentals
A few folks noted a new patent showing up
from netflix. They apparently now have a patent on their model of subscribing to rentals- where instead of being charged per disc, you are charged a monthly fee and can keep the rentals indefinitely without late fees. You can patent anything! Get on the bus!
Why don't I enter a patent for renting or leasing a car for a month?
Sometimes I wonder who it is they hire to work at the USPTO.
This appears to amount to patenting an idea, not an invention or method.
Heck, my old Anime club used to do that with Fansubs to get around the "no sale or rent" clause. You paid a fee each semester that allowed you to rent N tapes (the N was based off which membership you got), you could keep the tapes as long as you wanted, although you did have to turn them back in at the end of the semester and you could not have more than N tapes out at once. The fees went into blank tapes and shipping from Japan, the fansubbers did the actual translating and timing for free though.
I read the internet for the articles.
There's a quick solution for that... Start reporting them as stollen. Once I did that, the delays magically disappeared for a while. After reporting 3 or 4 stollen, the delays stopped permanently.
Yeah, netflix isn't all good, but they are still a step up from the alternatives.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I'm not sure if this is good or bad. On the one hand, I applaud netflix for protecting a buisness model they invented, or at least they were the first to implement and sink a lot of capital into.
But this gives them a monopoly. If they have the patent on a business, they have the monopoly and can stop everyone else from competeing.
A lot of the eTailers are trying to patent things that in effect would give them a similar monopolistic control over entire ways of doing business (oneClick etc...), these are definatly bad.
So I guess after reasoning this out, it's bad. It gives NetFlix an unfair control over a business model. There will be no competition, and they can raise the price to any level they see fit. So instead of you and me getting a service like this for $5 a month, becuase that's just a little bit more than it costs to make it happen, we will be forced to pay $25 or more becuase no-one is allowed to compete with NetFlix.
BTW: I'm a netflix user and love it. I think the system is great. I'd love some competition to drive the price way down.
M@
Krispy Cream is people
... (waits for everyone to respond calling me ingnorant...)
but is it even possible / should it even be possible to get a patent for a business model? If so, why hasn't the RIAA patented the process in place for screwing its artist & the general public, while pulling the wool over the eyes of lawmakers? Why hasn't SCO patented the process for going after more-successful companies in order to keep themselves afloat?
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
Well, I have to say that it is a non-obvious business practice.
Non-obvious... I've seen a few places that use similar models. Usually it's $0.50 rentals with a monthly fee. A lot of import rentals (Taping foreign shows for rental) do things like this.
Otherwise video stores would have tried it years ago. I'm not sure they should have patented it, but it is definitely a useful implementation.
Some video stores do it. And have been doing it for over a decade... Just go to import video stores and check them out. A big part of why they have membership fees is to continue to buy blank tapes to record the television shows on.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Notice in the flowchart on the first page of the pdf that a bunch of people linked to there is a box for surcharges if you turn over too many vids.
Netflix came up with a genuinely new business model, for which they should be rewarded
For which they are rewarded when someone joins and pays them money.
What secrets are they keeping that the public will benefit from the exposure of on their patent application?
None. It's bleeding obvious, and the first time you hear of it, it's obvious how to implement it, even by lemonade stand-level businesspeople.
If you're an American, read your Constitution--the justification is written into it. If you're not, well, quick start a Netflix-style business before the EU patent is granted.
It's all fine and good for Netflix to have spent money on this patent if the idea is to keep litigation at bay. You don't want Blockbuster doing the same thing to you...a defensive patent, Bezos called it, I believe.
What I am currently doing is writing a nice little email to Netflix...basically saying that if I so much as smell enforcement of this bullshit patent, I will immediately cancel my subscription to their business.
(from the news release)"Netflix allows customers to rent as many DVDs as they want for the monthly fee, with three movies out at a time. Customers can keep the DVDs as long as they like and they are delivered directly to the subscriber's address via first-class mail." Such innovation deserves a patent! Unfortunately, that business method is a couple of centuries old, and still viable today.
In the early days of mass media (books), printing was manual, and books were expensive. And many people of means lived in isolated places. Few could afford to buy as many books as they wanted to read.
To overcome this, "subscription libraries" were developed in the 1700s (one in Newport RI was founded in 1747). They charged an annual subscription fee, which went towards buying books and administrative costs. The city subscriber could stroll over to the library (or send a servant) and get a book to read, keep it for as long as they wanted, and get a new book when they brought back the previous one. Rural subscribers would request books by mail and get the books by mail. Fast readers could read as many as they wanted, with the restriction being that they had to return one to get another. (there may have been a multi-book quota ... I've never had to discuss the administrative details)
How is this different than the NetFlix patent, allowing for advancements in technology allowing online subscribing and electronic payment. Whether it's an annual subscription, or a monthly one, you sign up, you pay, you borrow, you return, you borrow some more.
And subscription libraries still exist today ... The one in Newport is sitll going strong, and I've seen some websites where you can subscribe to get access to their library of books or other non-web information.
I was recently told by my boss that our company's legal dept. wants us to try to patent *anything* that we've created. BTW, I'm a web developer/SA building tools for internal use. The idea is that by patenting stuff that we've written, we protect ourselves from somebody else patenting it and then suing us. We'd win (well, hopefully) because we'd be able to show prior art but it would still be an ugly legal battle. By spending the money up front, we protect ourselves and ensure that if somebody *does* try to sue us, we can show the judge the patent and hopefully wrap things up simply, cheaply, and quickly.
Although we could potentially use the patent to give competitors a hard time, the point would be to protect ourselves and our IP *before* somebody decides to attack us. It's also worth noting that if any of this patent stuff within my company actually looked like it was going to happen I'd be pushing strongly for something in writing basically saying that the patent wouldn't be abused.
It's a shame that anybody would have to go to these extremes just to make sure they can avoid a lawsuit but hey, that's life in the big city.
Rob
$20 gets you (up to) 20 movies a month. You can only have 3 out, and you have to mail each one in (like you do w/Netflix), so obviously there's no way you can really watch that many. At the end of each month, your credit *vanishes*. It does NOT roll over to the next month.
Would this model conflict w/the patent? There is no subscription rental, but rather a fixed price per DVD rential. Functionally, however, it would be the same.