James Delahunty
5 Apr 2006 9:04
Netflix, a popular online DVD rental service with over 5 million subscribers, has filed a lawsuit against competitor Blockbuster alleging basically that the rental chain stole its ideas. Netflix has patents protecting the way its service works from how customers use its website to receive movies while paying a monthly subscription to how customers can keep movies for as long as they want without late fees and how they can rejig a "preferred film" list on the site.
Blockbuster is the world's largest video rental chain, but the company launched a Netflix-like service as demand for the store-based business began to decline due to Netflix and other online services becoming more popular. Now Netflix wants Blockbuster's similar service immediately halted and the court to award damages. Netflix was founded in 1999 as one of the first online DVD rental services.
Blockbuster is hoping that this year the number of subscribers to its service will increase to 2 million. Analysts predict that the challenge by Netflix will be complicated as it may be tricky to enforce their patents.
Sourcew:
BBC News