Netflix Sued Over Fradulently Obtained Patents 193
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).'"
About time... (Score:2, Insightful)
One Click Shopping (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't care about suing people (Score:2, Insightful)
Without lawyers I am quite certain the world be a better place.
(Before anyone starts, yes I know there are good decent lawyers who do their jobs really well who practice criminal law, not this corporate bullshit)
OMG I chose the wrong profession... (Score:5, Insightful)
Forget IT, go to law school.
1) Help company get patents
2) Profit
3) Help company threaten to sue infringers
4) Profit
5) Defend company against other lawyers representing other patents
6) Profit
7) Sue other companies for bogus patents
8) Profit
Heck, even if the company they represent gets burned and goes under, they still walk away with no penalty. It's like all the financial benefits of inventing something, with out the work or risk!
-Rick
Re:About time... (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, if someone were to invalidate all software patents, that would be a reason to celebrate. This is just the (hopeful) invalidation of two patents out of two million, and perhaps the spanking of yet another company acting evil.
In the time it's taking me to write this response, I imagine three other software patents are being granted. Even if this moves forward (which it hasn't yet) we're still moving backwards.
Hard to prove (Score:4, Insightful)
You need to be able to prove that the company ignored prior art and if a case comes down to two people saying different things the courts will generally find in favor of the defendant.
I can see it now:
Lawyer 1: "You knew about the prior art before you filed for the patent because your secretary told me so!"
Defendant: "No I didn't!"
Judge: "Case dismissed"
In order for this cases to be sucessful, hard evidence needs to found (i.e. an e-mail saying "Lets ignore the prior art"). Otherwise the only ones who will win are the lawyers (as always).
Re:burn netflix (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess since the entity that I want to "pay up" isn't Microsoft, the RIAA, or the MPAA the mods decided to mod me offtopic. Whatever...
Netflix needs to get nailed on this (Score:5, Insightful)
It's said that no great idea ever comes out of nowhere. All of the greats stood of the shoulders of giants. However, if people get it into their head to abuse the patent system like this, then there will be no shoulders to stand on and in the end no great achievements.
Re:Don't care about suing people (Score:2, Insightful)
Or, more realistically... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't care about suing people (Score:3, Insightful)
laws be written the way they are. Harder to change the realities of science.
Wonderful irony (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't that neglagence(sp?) (Score:2, Insightful)
Isn't there a positive obligation to investigate prior art before filing. Just like you have a positive obligation to keep your walkway free of ice, protect children from attracive nuiscences and pay your taxes?
Wait, I have a car analogy too! If you're driving your car, and you close your eyes and speed through every stop sign, then shouldn't you still be ticketed (AFAIK, not seeing a stop sign is a legitimite, although difficult to prove, defense. But I'm not very sure as I made up the fact for my car analogy as required by Slashdot bylaw 22.45.b)
Re: How would you fix the patent office? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Who's in the class? (Score:1, Insightful)
You miss the point. That the customers signed up "voluntarily" is not the issue, it's that had Netflix not been engaged in their anti-competitive behaviour, then the prices that were paid _could_ have been lower. The reason customers signed up was that there was no alternative but to sign up with Netflix to receive that type of service. Kind of like the case where people voluntarily purchased PC's with Windows pre-installed, they didn't do it because they liked paying the "Windows tax", for the most part they simply had no choice.
Wow, That's Weak (Score:3, Insightful)
That's pretty weeak. Looks like they're going for extortion and to certify a class all in one shot. Amazing. Only in the 9th Circuit could something like this be perpetrated.
Re:Hard to prove (Score:3, Insightful)
But, why the heck is the system run this way? A patent application is supposed to be a legal document. It's not worded this way, but it is basically meant to convey "Under penalty of perjury, I hereby claim that this is a novel invention, that no other before me has invented. I have no knowledge of any prior art in this regard, and I find it highly unlikely that anyone else could have invented something similar, because it is so unique and novel."
Obviously, that's not how patents are viewed today. No one is afraid of submitting a bogus patent. The worst thing that will happen is that it's thrown out. But shouldn't they be treated as binding legal statements? If it is discovered that you claimed something was "novel and patent worthy" and it is later determined to be "obvious and prior implementations were publicly known" then the penalty should be that for perjury. After all, you filed a legal document with the government where you made some very strong claims, and it turned out that you were very much wrong.
A great amount of patent nonsense could be eliminated if they were treated like the binding legal documents that they are. No other legal document gives so much power with zero accountability the way a patent does. Imagine if an assayer certified that there was oil in a certain area. So a company buys the land in question, and discovers there is no oil. Would it be reasonable for the assayer to say: "Sorry there isn't any oil there--I actually didn't check myself, so you can't hold me accountable." Where is the liability for misrepresentation in weak patents?
Re:How would you fix the patent office? (Score:5, Insightful)
But still, there are so many things being patented, in such esoteric fields, that even smart people with training in related fields or tangential field or whatever don't have the technical knowledge to grasp the subject at hand, or -- and this is pretty important -- don't have a way to access the information that would give them a better grasp of it.
I mean, you're probably not a dumb guy, but imagine yourself presented with a sheaf of materials that you only vaguely know about from college five years ago. It's written in technical language that, even though broken down as much as it can be, is still pretty arcane. How are you going to judge if that patent application represents something truly innovative, something truly worth granting a patent for?
We can all say, "Well, they should know," but that's much harder said than done. Another problem is that the people truly qualified to judge the patent's worthiness are often very expensive people. While the patent office may pay a lot of money to their examiners, they still don't, as far as I am aware, pay as well as private industry.
Re:Or, more realistically... (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe the problem is that lawmakers simply don't understand that software is not an analog to the real world. They don't understand that it moves faster, and that software development often simply doesn't have to bear the cost of traditional inventions and innovations. Not to say that there aren't software products or implementations worthy of patenting, but rather to say that patents in a software world are simply different.
Or maybe, just maybe, non-technical people are so used to being explained things in terms of analogy they tend to lose sight of the fact that simply because an analogy is the most useful or expedient method of explaining a concept the concept itself isn't bound by the realities an analogy might suggest.
Re:identifying prior art (Score:3, Insightful)
It's called cookies. The fact that they could implement it without a custom browser proves prior art. After all, this exact type of transaction (remote key allows for local association of customer's data; server's perspective) was the inspiration for cookies. In other words, the prior art is anyone that ever wrote a web page that used cookies. Everything else from that point is obvious.
MOD PARENT UP (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:3, Insightful)
What isn't math then? I can describe almost anything as a set of formulas, even complex machines are just self-computing "programs" made out of physical material.
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:1, Insightful)