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Netflix Sued Over Fradulently Obtained Patents
An anonymous reader writes "Techdirt has a story about a new class action lawsuit against Netflix, claiming that the patents the company is using to sue Blockbuster were obtained fraudulently. Specifically, the lawsuit claims that Netflix was well aware of prior art, but did not include it in its patent filing, as required by law. The lawsuit also claims that Netflix then used these fraudulently obtained patents to scare others out of the market, in violation of antitrust law. 'Certainly, it makes for an interesting argument. Patents grant a government-backed monopoly -- which should get you around any antitrust violations. However, if that patent is obtained fraudulently, then I can see a pretty compelling claim that you've abused antitrust law. It would be interesting if other such cases start popping up (and, indeed, the lawyer who sent it to us said his firm is looking for additional patents to go after in this manner).'"
patent troll troll?
It would be nice to see this force reasonable patent reform.
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I have patented several products and have a patent pending (in manufacturing, not in software, so please no-one try to dissolve me in acid) for products and techniques I think are at least fairly innovative. That said, it's no use blaming the lawyers for the state of affair in the US and Canada. The fact that they're needed at every step of the process -- truly and absolutely needed -- is a testament not to lawyers greed but to legislative bloat.
Now, you can argue that lawyers and lawmakers form a recursive loop, but I'll leave that for people smarter than I.
What is is all that is. Isn't that obvious?
I can see Blockbuster suing them, or some other company whom Netflix threatened. But I can't imagine that there are enough of those companies to form a "class".
The article is pretty vague on exactly what the evidence is. The actual lawsuit is more informative, but harder to read.
The class (as I finally figured out on page 17 of the lawsuit) is Netflix customers, of whom Dennis Dilbeck is the representative sample. They're suing based on the idea that Netflix's prices are higher than they should be, because competition by Blockbuster should have brought prices down. I just can't see a judge buying it; these people all paid for Netflix's service at the asking price voluntarily.
From what I've read so far, I'm just not buying their claim. They are citing one patent in particular, which is about delivery of resources based on people making requests on a computer, but that's considerably different from Netflix's rental queue.
(I'm assuming that patents are not a completely stupid idea. Please, if you're in the "all patents are inherently evil" category, can you just assume that I agree with you and go preach to the choir in some other thread?)
I don't consider Netflix's idea at all obvious. I thought it was pretty neat when I came up with it: the idea of a rental service which doesn't have a due date is pretty cool and I'd never heard of it.
I know we hate patents, but I hate idiot class-action lawsuits even more. I've been involved in dozens of them; I literally throw them away unopened when they arrive in the mail. The lawyers always make money and I always get a coupon for 30 cents off my next bag of Chex Mix.
Sometimes, I'm even suing myself. Some of those lawsuits were shareholders suing the company. Well, I'm still a shareholder, so I'm suing myself.
All the lawyers need to find is one fool member of the class to make a claim, and the company will often settle rather than fight. It's free money for class-action lawyers.
That is simply absurd. Two or three years seems like a reasonable period a junk patent, but this is terribly unfair for meaningful discoveries which arguably justify a patent, like RSA.
Hypothetically, let us say that a researcher independently discovered a new algorithm which performed discrete Fourier transformations 2x faster than anything we have today. The commercial and societal value of this discovery is pretty huge. Two or three years of exclusivity couldn't do justice to the impact of this huge discovery.
(No, I am not endorsing patents on algorithms. RSA shouldn't have been patentable. It's just shortened patent periods is not a reasonable compromise, and far from 'Insightful')