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Netflix Sues Blockbuster for Patent Infringement
StrongGlad writes "Is the concept of renting movies over the Internet an original idea that deserves patent protection? Netflix claims it is, and is suing Blockbuster for patent infringement, alleging they are copying its seven-year-old online movie-rental business method. Netflix argues that it has patents covering its many online features, including allowing subscribers to keep DVDs for as long as they want without incurring a late fee, obtaining new DVDs upon return of those already watched, and prioritizing their own personal movie list. Blockbuster, for its part, has counterclaimed, insisting that Netflix is trying to monopolize the online movie-rental industry and stifle competition. Blockbuster also alleges that Netflix obtained its patents fraudulently by failing to disclose pertinent information to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and further contends there is nothing original about renting videos online in the first place."
USPTO is funded almost entirely by patent fees and is run under the Department of Commerce. The DoC is run from a cabinet position, thus placing it under the Executive Branch. The USPTO is run by an appointee of the President.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_method_paten t
Developers: We can use your help.
This really is all the court's fault. It was some case called Diamond v. Chakrabarty which defined a patentable item as, "anything under the sun that is made by man." This has opened the door (far wider anyway than it was) to all kinds of ridiculous lawsuits. Witness, a company called Knight and Associates attempting to claim that it's perfectly legal to file patents on plots (for books, movies, etc) and attempting to file said plot. It's just an attempt to set up a monopoly of ideas and eliminate all competition. Truly we live in a wonderfully capitalist society. Our business owners believe in free markets completely and totally, until someone bigger and better comes along and the market dictates their destruction. Then they squawk louder than any socialist I ever heard.
Great example, wrong company.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red's_Giant_Hamburgs
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." - Shepard Book Quoting Malcolm Reynolds
businesses have been using the gov't to give them an edge for hundreds of years. Agribuisness corps were founded by gov't irrigation, car companies by gov't road projects, Pharmaceuticals get the gov't to do all the difficult/expensive research, etc, etc. There is a long and illustrious history of using your tax dollars to screw you over. It's like Gore Vidal said: capitalism for the poor and socialism for the rich.
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For further reference, here are the patents:
6,966,484
Mailing and response envelope
Abstract
A mailing and response envelope for conveying an item from a sender to a recipient and back is disclosed. The envelope comprises a base panel, a sender address panel, and a recipient address panel. The sender address panel is affixed to the base panel by an adhesive region. The sender address panel and adhesive region define a pocket sized to accept an item. The adhesive region extends laterally on the base panel in an amount selected to ensure that a postal cancellation is not applied to an area overlying the item. The recipient address panel is joined to the base panel by a detachable joint. In this configuration, a fragile item may be conveyed from the sender to the recipient and from the recipient back to the sender without damage to the item.
7,024,381
Approach for renting items to customers
Abstract
According to a computer-implemented approach for renting items to customers, customers specify what items to rent using item selection criteria separate from deciding when to receive the specified items. According to the approach, customers provide item selection criteria to a provider provides the items indicated by the item selection criteria to customer over a delivery channel. The provider may be either centralized or distributed depending upon the requirements of a particular application. A "Max Out" approach allows up to a specified number of items to be rented simultaneously to customers. A "Max Turns" approach allows up to a specified number of item exchanges to occur during a specified period of time. The "Max Out" and "Max Turns" approaches may be used together or separately with a variety of subscription methodologies.
Developers: We can use your help.
Since when are business models subject to patent rights?
Since July 1998.
If the judge in the case grants an injunction against Blockbuster's online service, there will indeed be many pissed customers out there. Thankfully, Blockbuster has at least one way to mollify them in the meantime: give their customers the same X-rentals-at-a-time access to their brick and mortar stores as they do through online rental queues. Blockbuster's online rental service already includes vouchers for a fixed number of store rentals per month (in parallel with the online queue rentals). This would just make it entirely brick-and-mortar based. The store on the corner doesn't have nearly the selection, but it might hold over some customers that would otherwise quit Blockbuster. There should be some way to craft it that doesn't encroach on the patents in question.
I think you missed the point of the joke. This was an obvious nod to the (erronously summarised) story earlier this week about MS patenting verb conjugation, adding more fuel to the "patent obvious stuff: profit" model that has been emerging over the past few decades.
When I lived in London in the 50's Harrods had a lending library. You paid a monthly fee and they assigned a librarian to you. He/she (mostly she) picked out books for you - or you could request specific titles. The books were delivered in Harrods green electric vans. When you'd finished a book Harrods would pick it up and ship you another one. Sound like a familiar business model? It even involved technology (the electric vans).
(I've posted this information before, but it seems to bear repeating.)
Since when are business models subject to patent rights?
Since July 23, 1998. That was when the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit handed down the decision in State Street Bank & Trust Company v. Signature Financial Group, Inc.
Products, yes, but business models?
Products are not patentable; it's inventions that are patentable. Prior to the ruling, business methods were often asserted to be abstract ideas, like mathematical algorithms. You can't patent laws of nature, natural phenomenon, or abstract ideas including mathematical algorithms. You can only patent useful, applications of these. By analogy, you can't patent the consumer procrastination, but you can patent exploiting this by creating a subscription service where your competitors are creating rental services.
I think business method patents are a completely unintended result of the constitutional authority to grant patents from article 1 section 8. However, the court's reasoning in State Street v. Signature is impeccable. Congress has been granted the right to patent inventions without any stipulation as to the kind or nature of the invention. Given that this is so, it's hard to argue that novel business methods ar not inventions. Furthermore, the SC has pretty much ruled that the Congress may use the powers it is granted in the Article 1, section 8 in any manner they see fit, even if the results contradict the intent of the framers.
So, if Congress uses those powers in a way that expressly retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences, what matters is the extent of the powers used, not the use to which the powers are put.
So, even if buisness and software patents are manifestly a bad thing, Congress may create them.
In his Second Treatise on Government, John Locke, who was the primary philosophical influence on the framers, described the conditions under which things which are common property can be privatized. The fundamental principle is that any appropriation of the commons as private property requires that "enough and as good" be left for others. Claiming the idea of a business strategy by creating a business method around it seems to fail this test. But then again, if abstract ideas are in the commons (as patent theory says they are) claiming almost any invention as your personal property probably fails this test. Which is why patents are a time limited form of property, if it indeed is proper to call them property at all. They are a deal between the state and the inventor, which the state undertakes for the public good. If the state undertakes such deals against the public good, then the proper response in a democracy is to change the people running the state.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Thank you for getting my joke. I hope your parent poster remembers that getting modded funny doesn't help karma.
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
No, because Video Station was the first rental chain in America, not Blockbuster. They started in 1977, 8 years before Blockbuster existed. Prior art, my friend...
If big boobed women work at Hooters do one legged women work at IHOP?
I'm not sure who the first was, but up to 30 years ago, you could rent books on tape the same way. They were mainly marketed to the blind, and you ordered from a paper catalog, not the internet, but the keep them as long as you like, get the next one when you return them ideas were the same.
Also, my local library (Multnomah County, downtown Portland Oregon) did the same thing: for one dollar per book, you could get a book, either from the library or inter-library loan sent to your house. You could only have two out at a time that way, and you could have a queue which, in the mid-80's, you could update online by dialing in (directly, via 300 baud modem!). (You could also update it over the phone, by mail, or in person at the branch, I believe). They would send the next one when you sent one back.
These are the only two I can think of. But any decent patent lawyer should be able to find these and others pretty easily, I would think.
What about other companies doing exactly the same thing? Like DVDBarn, Intelliflix, etc.? Is Netflix suing them, too?
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
I was a big netflix fan. But when all of this started, I terminated my service and sent customer service an e-mail explaining why. I had hoped netflix was a decent company, but these tactics to monopolize are pissing longtime customers off.
There's no place like ~/
I'm not familiar with the Harrod's vans but electric vehicles have been used for milk delivery for many, many years in Britain. Milk floats don't go fast (there are multiple TV sitcom sketches involving milk float chases making light of this fact) or have much range but they are quiet and thus preferable for pre-dawn driving in residential areas.
Graham