Reuters – April 4, 2006 via the always informative Overlawyered.com.
Online DVD rental company Netflix on Tuesday sued rival Blockbuster for patent infringement, asking a federal judge in Northern California to shut down Blockbuster’s 18-month-old online rental service and award Netflix damages, according to a copy of the filing.
The first patent, granted in 2003, covers the method by which Netflix customers select and receive a certain number of movies at a time, and return them for more titles.
The second patent, issued on Tuesday, “covers a method for subscription-based online rental that allows subscribers to keep the DVDs they rent for as long as they wish without incurring any late fees, to obtain new DVDs without incurring additional charges and to prioritize and reprioritize their own personal dynamic queue–of DVDs to be rented,” the lawsuit said.
How can a method of marketing be patentable? Do the patent office clerks just rubber stamp all applications?
“How can a method of marketing be patentable?”
The legality of business patents arose out of the case of State St. Bank & Trust Co. v. Signature Fin. Group, 149 F.3d 1368 (1998).
I hope Blockbuster gets sued out of existence. I hate that store!
“SENSORY TRADEMARKS” include a duck quacking (AFLAC), a lion roaring (MGM), yodelling (Yahoo!), giggling (Pillsbury), and a “pre-programmed rotating sequence of a plurality of high intensity columns of light projected into the sky to locate a source at the base thereof” (Ballantyne of Omaha).
HOOTERS SUED a competitor for stealing its “trade dress,” i.e., the packaging of its waitresses.
THE ROCK AND ROLL Hall of Fame sued several journalists for naming their website “The Jewish Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.” They renamed it Jewsrock.org.
LAST YEAR Mister Softee spent $170,000 to track down and sue 45 competitors for copying its blue-and-white trucks and playing its copyrighted jingle.
MICROSOFT UK held a contest for the best film on “intellectual property theft”; finalists had to sign away “all intellectual property rights” on “terms acceptable to Microsoft.”
source
http://www.motherjones.com/news/exhibit/2006/03/intellectual_property.html
These are not all patent trolls either. There are some well known names in this list.
MICROSOFT UK held a contest for the best film on “intellectual property theft”; finalists had to sign away “all intellectual property rights” on “terms acceptable to Microsoft.”
How come M$ doesn’t sue all these crap ware venders that use pop ups that look like real windows dialog boxes to trick you into clicking on them.
With this reasoning Blockbuster should counter sue because they were renting movies before netflix was a company.
That is obviously not true. First of all, Blockbuster did not, to my knowledge, patent movie rental. Second, the COMPLETELY Stole the idea protected by the patent that netflix holds. Nexflix is going to win this, I hope, because it is a cut and cried argument of simple patent infringement and their demands are sensical.
How can a method of marketing be patentable?
I remember thinking that when amazon got the patnt for “1-click” shopping…
It makes as much sense to me as someone being given the patent on the concept of drive-thru windows – and suing McDonalds, Burger King, Jack in the Box, etc.
The galling part is:
…Netflix on Tuesday sued rival Blockbuster for patent infringement… The second patent, issued on Tuesday, …
Sue to shutdown a compeditor’s operation – which has been running for 18-months – because of a patent you were issued today???
what utter crap!
Did NetFlix advertise the fact that there business model was “patent pending”???
I’m trying to get a patent on a method of granting patents.
I was reading about the Dan Brown case and it just occured to me that this is another totally asinine lawsuit.
The authors of The Holy Blood And The Holy Grail claim to be writing history in their claim that Jesus and Mary had a child.
But they are claiming copyright on this piece of history! Now that qualifies as asisine!
So, I wonder, who has copyright to WWII? The estate of Winston Churcill, I suppose.
The patent office and the patent process are obviously BROKEN.
Just stating the obvious.