Netflix sue Blockbuster

Netflix have sued Blockbuster for infringing a business method patent.

"Netflix, founded in 1999, was one of the first companies to offer this service, and has a patent protecting the way it allows customers to select their films, get them sent out, and then return them for more.

Its second patent covers the way customers can keep the films for as long as they want without being charged extra and how they can rejig their list of preferred films."

To paraphrase Tim O'Reilly, it defies belief that you can get a patent on something obvious just because you can do it on the Net.