Netflix Sued By Patent Troll

(RTTNews) - Netflix is being sued by Blackbird Technologies, a patent troll company, over its new offline download feature.

Patent trolling is a business where companies that do not have any products, services or assets acquire patents and make profit by means of licensing or litigation.

Blackbird has also filed the lawsuit against Soundcloud, Vimeo, Starz, Mubi and Studio 3 Partners because all these content provider's app allows users to download content for watching while offline. The lawsuit alleges that these companies encourage unauthorized content duplication.

Blackbird was founded by two former big-firm patent attorneys, Wendy Verlander and Chris Freeman. The company owns US Patent No. 7,174,362.

Netflix's had introduced the download feature to its users in November last year. Users can use the download button next to the play button to save content to watch later on when the device may not be connected to the internet.