US 4,949,187 · Granted 1990-08-14

The 1990 Patent That Predicted Netflix 15 Years Early

Imagine downloading a movie to your home computer whenever you want, then watching it anytime without waiting for it to stream. This 1990 patent describes exactly that system: a central library of digital movies that people could grab and store locally, with an automatic billing system to pay studios. It's basically Netflix on a hard drive, designed decades before broadband made streaming practical.

Curated and verified by the IsItPatented Editorial team

The plain-English version

What it protects

The claim covers a video system where viewers can remotely download digital movies from a centralized archive, store them locally on mass storage, and play them back at any time. What's protected here is the combination of the remote library, the digital download mechanism, local storage and playback, speed-variable playback without quality loss, and an integrated billing and royalty-tracking system that charges viewers and pays content providers automatically.

Why it matters

Filed in 1988 and granted in 1990, this patent anticipated the on-demand video distribution model by over a decade. While the technology to make it practical at scale didn't exist until the 2000s, the patent staked out the core business and technical framework: centralized content, user-controlled download timing, local storage, and automated payments. It represents an early conceptual blueprint for what became video-on-demand services.

Real-world use

Every time you download a movie on your tablet or smart TV to watch offline, or queue up a rental in your account to watch later, you're using the system architecture this patent describes.

Original USPTO abstract

A video communications system is provided that makes it possible for home viewers to download a movie in digital format from a large archive library, store the digital movie file locally, and view the movie at any convenient time. The system may limit access to particular movies and provides an accounting system that is used to bill downloads to the viewer's account as well as to post royalty payments to movie providers. Frequently viewed movies are quickly accessible via random access mass storage while infrequently viewed movies may be called up from a streaming tape archive. The digitalization of the program source allows for playback at various speeds, as well as pause, with no distortion or loss in picture quality.

Patent details

Publication number: US 4,949,187
Filing date: 1988-12-16
Grant date: 1990-08-14
Assignee: Cohen Jason M
Inventor(s): COHEN; JASON M.
CPC class: H04N7/17336

View original record on Google Patents →

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