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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Netflix Inc may face a tough fight in enforcing its patents for its pioneering online DVD rental service against rival Blockbuster Inc., but could reap substantial benefits if it wins or the companies settle, lawyers and analysts said on Wednesday.

Netflix on Tuesday sued Blockbuster in federal court in San Francisco, seeking an injunction to stop Blockbuster from infringing on two patents that protect Netflix's business method.

The patents cover Netflix's practice of having subscribers prioritize "queues," or lists of titles they want to rent, on Netflix's Web site, and of automatically replacing each DVD that is returned for the next title on the subscriber's queue.

Piper Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy likened the suit to one filed by Yahoo Inc. subsidiary Overture Services against Google Inc. in connection with claims that Google infringed on Overture's paid search patent.

Google ultimately settled the case by agreeing to take out a license to the Overture patent and several related patents for shares of Google stock worth about $450 million, according to the Web site of Overture's attorney, Robert Fram.

"Netflix really did create this model when no one else was doing online DVD rental and they made a business of it," Rashtchy said. "As far as I know, no one had created a monthly subscription model where you were not purchasing but renting."