Amazon & Barnes and Noble Settle One-Click Dispute

rtphokie writes: "C|Net is reporting that Amazon.com and Barnes&Noble.com have settled the over 2 year old lawsuit over the expedited ordering process known as '1-Click' ordering on Amazon's site and 'Express Checkout' on Barnes and Noble's. Details of the settlement are (of course) unavailable."

Comments

Will this affect other sites?

[_Ash_]

The outcome of the settlement is most certainly very important. If Barnes & Noble licenses Amazons technology or if Barnes & Noble have paid some amount of money, lots and lots of other websites can expect legal action from Amazon. After all, there are tons of sites which use the 1-click technology.

BountyQuest 1-click contest results revisited

[Seth Finkelstein]

In light of this result, it's interesting to go back and review an old interview about the BountyQuest 1-click patent contest, back in April 2001 :

On March 14, 2001, BountyQuest announced that while no one had uncovered the prior art that would invalidate Amazon's 1-click patent , a few were able to surface information that could make the patent more difficult to enforce A pyhrric victory? Perhaps, but one that has called attention to the exponential growth in overly-broad and often questionable patents.

It isn't obvious to me whether the contest helped (by turning up near-prior-art), or hurt (by letting Amazon claim a PR victory). Just food for thought in view of the settlement.

What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)

Re:Details of the settlement are unavailable

[weston]

I would be interested in discovering exactly how they settled this.

One wonders if there shouldn't be a law REQUIRING public disclosure of any settlement for any patent related suit. After all, patents were once ostensibly about stimulating general progress and the public interest, so it's a public interest matter.