Jakob Nielsen Defends "1-Click" Patents

danila writes "In his latest column the king of usability discusses competitive testing of website usability. Among other things he suggests that "Some tasks might be much easier on your competitor's site, and those tasks would indicate areas where you can learn from the competition and improve your design." Overall, a very informative and insighful article, if not for a small paragraph in the end. "You can patent usability innovations to keep the competition from stealing them. Most Web projects are managed by marketing departments that have no experience with the patent system. Websites, however, are inventions and should be protected when you invest in developing something new." How can you learn from competition if every potential improvement is already patented?"

Comments

stupid idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh man, Nielsen, you are such a smart guy, how can you even *conceive* such a stupid idea?

Usability is required on *all* sites, not just the ones that have the resources to patent everything.

So if I come up with a great usability enhancement, I should patent it? How does that increase the usability of the web overall? We live in a sea of unusable web sites and horribly designed programs.. now he's saying "hey, the goal is actually not to make web sites more usable. The goal is to come up with usability enhancements that one or two web sites will use. The other sites can go stuff themselves."

I'm reading this right?

Basic stuff like this should *not* be patented. The web needs all the help it can get. I wish every site could use 1-click shopping. When I first saw Amazon using 1-click I didn't think "wow, that's so innovative" I thought "gee, what took them so long? that's exactly what cookies should be used for!"

Insane. I can't wait to get sued for something like putting the "delete" and "submit" buttons on opposite sides of the form to reduce accidental deletions or some bullshit like that. Hell I wouldn't be surprised if that's already patented!

Grr

[Dachannien]

Websites, however, are inventions and should be protected when you invest in developing something new.

No, websites are code and/or art, and therefore are copyrightable but not (well, should not be) patentable.

He never defends one-click patents!

[robolemon]

If you read the article, Nielsen never mentions one-click patents. In my opinion he never even implies that one-click is patentable. The way I read his argument is that if you come up with a novel solution to a usability problem that requires enough work on your part as a company to even come up with, it deserves a patent.