Posted on 06/24/2010 7:17:52 PM PDT by libh8er
While everyone else is left scratching their heads, Amazon and its lawyers are patting themselves on the back. The company has managed to (re)confirm a patent for 1-Click, a method of buying stuff online with, you guessed it, just one click. And that's it, that's all there is to it. If you deploy a system that enables customers to purchase anything online just by pressing one button, you will be infringing on Amazon's patent.
It has been a long battle for Amazon, which has been pursuing this patent for more than a decade now. It was initially granted the patent, which was filed in 1997, and named Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos as one of its creators, but this was disputed later on. In 2006, the patent went into review again by the US Patent Office (USPTO) and, at one point, many of the company's claims in the patent were rejected.
But Amazon didn't give up so easily and made a few amendments to the original patent claim, which were intended to rectify the counter-claims. Actually, 'amendments' may be a bit of a stretch, Amazon just added six new words, "purchasable through a shopping cart model," and changed an 'a' to a 'the.' Based on these changes and after a four-year re-review process, the USPTO has decided that Amazon's claims can indeed be patentable and has granted it to the e-commerce giant. The only change is that it now applies only for sites that have a 'shopping cart' in the purchase process, which is just about every online shop out there.
This decision, obviously, nurtures and encourages innovation and competition, which is, after all, what the patent laws in the US and elsewhere were created for and, supposedly, are about. Innovation like the online book store of Barnes and Noble having to add more, absolutely useless, clicks to the purchase process in order to stand apart from Amazon's 1-Click. "Ladies and gentlemen, we now have confirmation that the USPTO is a joke," as Techdirt Founder Mike Masnick puts it.
“Techdirt”, yeah there’s a source that’s qualified to offer opinions on IP law.
Look, everything is obvious after someone thinks it up. Amazon’s patent is no more “a joke” than countless others, depending on whose ox is being gored. Getting a patent is relatively easy (I have several) - the real work comes when you successfully defend it in court, and that’s what Amazon has now done. Good for them, they played by the rules and won.
I kind of like the fact all other sites will give you one more chance to consider"do I really want this item?"
Does the patent really make it illegal for another site to allow purchasing from existing customers by using one click, or does it just stop them from using the term 1-click? I’m guessing the 1st, since the 2nd would be copyright or trademark. But I don’t know how anybody could patent the idea of saving information and using it to accomplish a task in a single click.
Of course, I never use Amazon 1-click, because I’m afraid I’ll make a mistake and won’t get a chance to fix it.
If I apply for a patent to climb up a ladder by skipping every other step, does that mean I should be granted one ?
I am a strong supporter of intellectual property rights, but this is ridiculous. I always thought that patents are granted only for inventions that are novel, useful, and not obvious.
It’s like patenting “pushing one button” to buy a Coke from a Coke machine.
The USPTO is just another govt bureaucracy.. which means they are likely full of stupid and inept bureaucrats like any other.
You cannot patent “ideas”. You can patent only very specific implementations.
There is another story out that just a few days ago Amazon patented social networking ! Not a joke. It means facebook can face huge liability claims for infringing on Amazon’s patent.
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