Not so fast Blockbuster…Netflix is sueing over patent infringment. Whoever thought renting a movie could ever lead to such bitter battles as this …
I read another article on this.
It :eek: boggles me that Netflix apparently thinks the business model of ‘keep movies as long as you want, no late fees, pay a monthly fee for X movies out at a time’ satisfies the patentable requirement of being ‘non obvious’
I suspect that if you went to a video store clerk (‘a person skilled in the technical field of the invention’) to come up with some alternate movie plan business ideas pre-netflix, most of them who bothered to answer the question would come up with something pretty similar to netflix plan. Or is that naive just because it’s ‘obvious in retrospect’?
Come to think of it, wouldn’t the Social subscription libraries be prior art? (Not entirely I admit… they didn’t have borrowing limits, at least not as far as the staff report mentions.)
If it were obvious, someone would have done it already… 
-FrL-
Actually, about 5 years ago I used to work for a national audiobook rental chain that had almost the exact same policy as Netflix. You’d buy a chunk of time up front, anywhere from a month to a year, along with a maximum number of ‘cases’ you could have checked out (a case held 4 cassettes or 6 CDs. Most books were 1 case, some were more) at any one time. You could hold onto the cases as long as you desired, or exchanged them as often as you wanted. We’d even ship the cases through the mail if the member was out of town.
The biggest flaw in the model, IMO, was requiring an upfront purchase. Most membership plans were over $100, and some ran much, much higher. Most people found paying that much right away decidedly unattractive.
There’s enough differences that it could probably legally be called a different business model from Netflix’s, but similar enough that it could reasonably be said to have been done before.
You’d think that if there was an opportunity for a patent in this situation, it would be for the round-trip DVD mailing envelope. The Netflix claim does sound rather overreaching, but the fault for such broad patent protection is the U.S. Patent Office’s.
By coincidence, I’m considering filing for a business model patent, myself. My application covers the basic scenario wherein a customer walks into a store, self-selects the merchandise she wants, takes it to a cashier’s station, and pays for it.
I’m gonna be a bazillionaire. 
^^^:D My version of your plan this: I keep telling people that I am going to invent a word processor that does away with all the mumbo jumbo on the screen and prints the type directly onto the paper with eack stroke of a key.
Sir Rhosis
Your invention will just be a fleeting mention in history books after I patent my no keyboard required marking method. You use a small rod with a small resevoir of ink in it. You just mark the paper with the rod. No big machine required. Infininte fonts, and it is portable. Also no refilling the ink in most models as they will be so cheap you just throw the rod away and buy new.
-Otanx
I read a book that had a section on the history of the supermarket concept, and according to the book, when the idea of self-selected merchandise was first proposed, many said “It’ll never work! People don’t want to do your work for you!” Remember in those days, shopping was under the old “General Store” concept: you walked up to a counter, told the clerk you need 5 pounds of flour, a gallon of vegetable oil, etc. and he went back to the store room and got it.
I thought that was interesting. So while it may be obvious to us today, at one point this idea was pretty novel!