Pre-1994 Reference to e-Commerce?

pkaral asks: "Does anyone know a reference to ecommerce that predates 1994 (maybe from sci-fi)? I work with a company facing the Bellboy e-Commerce patent claim. It turns out that the patent must be taken seriously, but can be defeated by a pre-1994 description - fiction or not - of an online purchase."

"Requirements:

(1) Description of someone buying/ordering something over a computer network,
(2) buyer gets real-time order confirmation (a salient aspect of the patent), and
(3) the text was published before Dec 17, 1993.

I figure some author, maybe William Gibson, may have written something along these lines. If the Slashdot community knows of a specific reference we could rid the world of this ridiculous patent."

Comments

Minitel

[ehikory]

Minitel, a nationwide computer network that supports purchases, was deployed in France in 1980.

Prior art in trading

[sigwinch]

Stocks, bonds, and commodities have long been sold using computers, and real-time confirmation is an essential part of the business. Commodities sales in particular constitute an actual purchase of deliverable physical chattels, and are indistinguishable from modern 'e-commerce'. Ditto for bank transactions that involve currency conversion (which unlike a simple transaction constitute a sale of goods at a profit).

Frankly, I wouldn't lift a damn finger until the patent holder sued for willful criminal infringement, then I'd rape the individuals involved (not the companies -- if they are gonna personally be idiots, they have to be personally punished) violently with prior art and fraud counterclaims. But then I tend to have a scorched earth approach...

Easy Sabre

[sulli]

As I recall I bought some American Airlines plane tickets on AOL in 1993 via a service they had called Easy Sabre.