Netflix Granted Patent on DVD Subscription Rentals 638
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!
PATENT SOURCE (Score:3, Insightful)
Imagine if McDonalds had patented the "drive-thru" method of selling. THE PTO FARKING SUCKS I AM GETTING SO TIRED OF THIS CRAP
How broad is this patent? (Score:5, Insightful)
Tomorrow's Headline (Score:5, Insightful)
They've succeeded in making themselves worth buying, kudos.
-R
You know... (Score:2, Insightful)
I love Netflix for the way they revolutionized my DVD viewing, and will hence-forth be very protective of them.
Re:Walmart... haha! (Score:5, Insightful)
Patents are for keeping out those pesky small innovative companies who can't affort to go to court and don't have their own patent portfolio so that they can force cross-licensing.
Patent will be challenged. (Score:5, Insightful)
Expect Wal-mart to fucking bend Netflix over. I get your "pull for the little man" thing. On the other hand, I'm glad a relatively large company (Netflix) finally pulled this patent crap against a company that's actually going to challenge the patent, as opposed to a mom-and-pop who can't fight back.
Patentable (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think there is anything resembling prior art, and for most of us, it was kindof a WOW! epiphany/paradigm shift thing.
Re:Walmart... haha! (Score:5, Insightful)
BS patent or not, Netflix having a patent on this method of DVD rentals kills the competition--whether it comes from a Big Corporation or otherwise. A lack of competition is ALWAYS bad for the consumer. In the end, it's not WalMart who's getting screwed, it's you.
No Bad Patent should be protected... (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure, Netflix provides a new and rather unique system of DVD Rentals, but it isn't really a NEW Idea. There has been years upon years of renting things for a period of time...
Such as Home or Apartment Rentals. Anyone ever rent an apartment before? How about rent (lease) and automobile from a car dealership?
This patent should be destroyed as quickly as possible and whoever passed this patent in the USPTO needs to be hung up by their toes for a few weeks.
Re:Does this save them from Wal-Mart? (Score:1, Insightful)
Maybe FTD.COM can patent their new system! (Score:1, Insightful)
The FTD.COM system:
1. Take order.
2. Jam in a second choice for crap nobody wants.
3. Pretend to deliver second choice crap.
4. Deliver the second choice crap the next day.
5. Profit!
Oh yes, no refunds either, but they will gladly deliver more crap you did not want to order as a consolation gift.
Details here [slashdot.org] (several journal entries cover it).
BTW, the DVD system sounds suspiciously like renting a car with unlimited mileage. Not sure if this counts as "prior art" or not, however the rental patent certainly counts as stupid.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:PATENT SOURCE (Score:3, Insightful)
The drive-thru was a similarly revolutionary idea - whoever started it SHOULD have patented it...
Re:What other DVD rental services should I conside (Score:2, Insightful)
Awesome (Score:2, Insightful)
This is precisely why we have patents! To reward innovation.
Re:PATENT SOURCE (Score:3, Insightful)
I can understand giving somebody an 18 year monopoly on a product that required lots of money spent on R&D, but allowing any bright idea to be patented is just idiotic.
Re:PATENT SOURCE (Score:5, Insightful)
I can understand giving somebody an 18 year monopoly on a product that required lots of money spent on R&D, but allowing any bright idea to be patented is just idiotic.
Well, that pretty much writes off any small inventor. If you have to pour $X into R&D to get a patent, you've basically walled off a class of innovators from ever bringing their ideas to market.
Don't know about that (Score:3, Insightful)
Damn, you're a snide little shit. Actually, I wouldn't expect Walmart to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into a business that can be shut down quickly with a court order. They may license the patent or they may fight it, but ignoring it isn't likely. Especially with the treble damages that would potentially exist for a patent of this profile, as claiming to have not seen the patent isn't an option.
For the exact reasons you claim, netflix is likely to cave, since they DONT want to fight walmart. But once Walmart has large amounts of cash invested in this, they can't walk away from a settlement without committing financial suicide, giving strong leverage to netflix. So expect any action to occur before walmart rolls their operation.
Get it?
Re:Other patents... (Score:4, Insightful)
I originally signed up for the service to get a couple of titles my video store didn't have (Brazil, some concert films). I had a few titles on my rental list that started "Playboy's...", but after not looking for a month or so, I couldn't even find the category any more.
In my mind, if you're gonna carry very-soft adult materials like playboy videos (basically just naked girls prancing around. Nothing more provokative than a nipple), then do it. Don't change your mind. The local cable operators carry more "offensive" on the scrambled stations all day long, and they didn't stop carrying mainstream movies with more provokative content.
They changed their mind. I don't know why. But after that, I thought perhaps they COULD change their minds again, and suddenly head down the Blockbuster path of "extra special no-naked-people" versions of movies. Boo Hiss.
I've used a couple of rental services since then, but after a better video store finally opened locally, I had almost no need of netflix service.
Now I just use wantedlist.com, which is an adult-only service, and don't worry what the hell netflix might do.
Re:You know... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:PATENT SOURCE (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Walmart? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is not an outrageous patent.
Re:Other patents... (Score:5, Insightful)
suddenly head down the Blockbuster path of "extra special no-naked-people" versions of movies.
That annoys the shit out of me. What the fuck is it with people here in the States that makes them so afraid of seeing naked people? BUT THE CHILDREN MIGHT SEE. It's the soccer moms doing it, I'm telling you...
It's not so much that they cut the naked people out. It cutting ANYTHING out of the movie without telling me. I want to see the movie the way the director intended it. Which is why I'm a big fan of director's cuts that have more footage, a lot of times extra scenes that add a LOT to the movie. I hate it when someone high up cuts this and this out to get the pg-13 rating which means bigger sales.
Screw that. Movies are an art form. I don't go to a museum and expect to see black bars on all the naked statues and paintings, do I? I fail to see the difference.
Re:PATENT SOURCE (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:PATENT SOURCE (Score:4, Insightful)
Typical /. black and white reactions (Score:2, Insightful)
This is one of the better patents I've seen recently - it actually describes true innovation that has been implemented, and actually protects the innovator against competitors who would copy the idea and the model.
Blockbuster's Rental Passes (Score:3, Insightful)
As I recall, they came out with that after Netflix.
Re:Awesome (Score:3, Insightful)
The question is, would they have done this if it hadn't been patentable? If so, it shouldn't be patentable. If they would have done it anyway, then the patent isn't promoting progress.
Changing Your Mind (Score:1, Insightful)
NetFlix is just a business. If they stopped carrying adult titles, it's very likely that adult titles were a money-losing item. Perhaps an awfully high percentage of them "disappeared in the mail." NetFlix does put it's customers on the honor system after all. I bet a lot of DVDs that are reported stolen are simply kept.
For whatever it's worth, I've been a NetFlix subscriber since Fall 2002, and I've had very good luck. Fast and correct service, and only a few discs too scratched up to play correctly. I like it.
Re:Get off the bus! (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is none of these are enforced. It's easy cheesy to patent something that has been in the public domain for hundreds of years. Perhaps those patents aren't valid, but defending against an invalid patent claim takes millions. You independently "invent" thousands upon thousands of patented ideas every time you write a program. If there weren't a general truce and distain for patents in the field we would in an even bigger mess. The business world will be in a similar morass in a few years now that business practice patents have been validated, except I imagine 90% of MBA's would kill the goose that lays the golden eggs if hungry for some poultry.
God help anyone starting a business now in the developed world, well unless it is a legal firm with patents on the partner system for IP cross licensing.
Re:Walmart... haha! (Score:3, Insightful)
Rather short-sighted. I personally don't care whether corporations are large or small, as long as they make nice products without ruining things for the rest of society (such as environment, legislation, etc.)
There are no winners in the BS patent game, except perhaps patent attourneys. Seeing people punished for trying to do productive work makes me feel sick and sad. Anyway, they'll probably start suing from the low end, so wipe the grin off your face.
Re:Walmart? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, the people who believe that business models should be patentable will find out too late that it was a bad idea.
"Intellectual Property" isn't. Ideas are very different from material goods, and trying to treat them the same is stifling the creativity that has advanced science, technology, and business in the United States up until now.
TTFN
How quickly we turn! (Score:1, Insightful)
Claim review of Netflix.com's 6,584,450 U.S. Paten (Score:2, Insightful)
Hopefully they'll simply use it as a defensive mechanism to prevent others from suing them for patent infringement. But one never knows.
The independent claims read:
1. A method for renting items to customers, the method comprising the computer-implemented steps of:
receiving one or more item selection criteria that indicates one or more items that a customer desires to rent;
providing to the customer up to a specified number of the one or more items indicated by the one or more item selection criteria; and
in response to receiving any of the items provided to the customer, providing to the customer one or more other items indicated by the one or more item selection criteria, wherein a total current number of items provided to the customer does not exceed the specified number.
and
16. A method for renting items to customers, the method comprising the computer-implemented steps of:
receiving one or more item selection criteria that indicates one or more items that a customer desires to rent;
providing to the customer up to a specified number of the one or more items indicated by the one or more item selection criteria; and
in response to receiving any of the items provided to the customer, providing to the customer one or more other items indicated by the one or more item selection criteria, wherein a total number of items provided to the customer within a specified period of time does not exceed a specified limit.
Re:Good for them (Score:3, Insightful)
A couple of centuries? "Subscription libraries" have been in existance since at least the 1750s (and were apparently still in existance in the 1950s). After the post office was invented, they delivered books to the subscribers by mail. It's the same marketing plan as used by NetFlix ... you signed up, paid, and could check out and return as many books as you could read.
Business methods, good or bad, aren't patentable (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of these comments are way off-topic. Whether or not this is a good method of distributing DVDs is not the issue, nor is whether anyone should anyone for movies at all, or how good various companies are at delivering on what they promise.
The real issue is that however good this business model is or isn't, there is absolutely nothing that is technically innovative about it. It is a simple billing model -- something that is explicitly not patentable.
This doesnt' even call for congressional action. Firing half of the patent department for technical incompetence and failure to read the laws they are supposed to be enforcing would be more appropriate.