SoylentNews

Fnord666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

It's been barely two months since Netflix added its long-awaited download feature [arstechnica.com], and the online streaming company has already been sued over it. The plaintiff is a company few have heard of: Blackbird Technologies, a company with no products or assets other than patents. Blackbird's business is to buy up patent rights and file lawsuits over them, a business known colloquially as "patent trolling [arstechnica.com]."

Blackbird was founded by two former big-firm patent attorneys, Wendy Verlander and Chris Freeman. The organization owns US Patent No. 7,174,362 [uspto.gov], which it hopes will result in payouts from internet video companies with offline-viewing features. On Wednesday, Blackbird (who tells potential clients about being "able to litigate at reduced costs and achieve results") filed lawsuits against Netflix (PDF) [archive.org], Soundcloud (PDF) [arstechnica.com], Vimeo, Starz, Mubi, and Studio 3 Partners, which owns the Epix TV channel. All of the companies have some type of app that allows for downloading content and watching it offline.

The patent-holding company, which filed the lawsuits in Delaware federal court, has good reason to hope for success. The '362 patent already has a track record of squeezing settlement cash out of big companies. The patent was originally issued in 2000 to Sungil Lee, a San Jose entrepreneur and business instructor. In 2011, Lee sold his patent to Innovative Automation LLC, a patent troll that filed dozens of lawsuits in East Texas and California. Innovative Automation said that the '362 patent covered various "methods and systems of digital data duplication" and used it to sue services like "Target Ticket" and "DirecTV Everywhere." Court records suggest most of those cases settled within months.

Source:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/patent-troll-sues-netflix-over-offline-downloads/ [arstechnica.com]

Original Submission