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Netflix Granted Patent On DVD Rental Service
from the silly-obvious-patents dept
What is it with all the good e-commerce sites patenting the most obvious business models? Amazon has a history of patenting everything, and now we find out that Netflix has been granted a patent for their DVD subscription service. That's right. The idea that you can "subscribe" to a monthly service that will deliver DVDs to you is patentable, according to the US Patent and Trademark Office. Now, of course, Netflix will use this patent to try to fight off competition from Wal-Mart and Blockbuster - though, it's likely those company will try to fight the patent, pointing out that it's fairly obvious.
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IANAL, but...
Does anyone know when the patent was filed in relation to when they actually started advertising their service?
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Re: IANAL, but...
The biggest threat would be "prior art" - anything that resembles the patent that is out there before you filed it - and as the article mentioned, anything "obvious" shouldn't get a patent in the first place.
I think finding "prior art" would be pretty easy in this case. It's not like there were no mail rental businesses before this company came along.
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