Late last year, Netflix finally gave subscribers something they had been wanting for years- the ability to download movies and shows for offline viewing. Unfortunately, it hasn?t taken long for patent trolls to start gunning at Netflix over this new feature as this week, ?Blackbird Technologies? filed a lawsuit against Netflix, claiming its offline downloads violates one of its own patents.
Blackbird Technologies has ?patent troll? written all over it as a company with zero products but a ton of patent filings. In this case, Blackbird owns US Patent No. 7,174,362, which is a ?method and system for supplying products from pre-stored digital data in response to demands transmitted via computer network?. It?s a very vague patent but according to the company, Netflix, Vimeo, Starz, SoundCloud, Mubi and Studio 3 Partners are all infringing on it.
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