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Judge's Ruling Spares 1-Click
theodp writes "Agreeing with Amazon's characterization of its 1-Click feature as a feature of an electronic product ordering system and not an electronic fund transfer or transaction system, a Judge has tossed out a $50M lawsuit that threatened Amazon's 1-Click patent. But outside of Court, Amazon touts its patent-pending Amazon Honor System as a way for Web sites to use 1-Click shopping technology for voluntary payment transactions - most notably for 9-11 donations and campaign contributions - that do not involve consumer goods or Amazon-specified prices, which the Judge argues are essential 1-Click ingredients."
You give the whores in DC lots of money and they will make the laws that you want.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Some of these patents are way out there. I like to shop at Amazon, but a one click patent, come on? It reminds of that company that tryed to patent linking, now that would have killed the internet, crazy.
roamingfeet
This ruling doesn't actually say that 1 click ordering is a good and just patent, it just says that it doesn't infringe on another similar patent, is that correct?
In other words, if someone else were to implement 1 click ordering, and Amazon sued them, this case would have no bearing on that one.
Programming is the act of automating the use of complexity, usually made up of simpler complexities, so to enable the use and reuse of the complexity by the user of that complexity, easy.
There is a world of prior art here, going back even before computers were invented, to the initial use of abstractions to express a more complex thought.
Even if one-click was leitimate (which O'reilly said it very well may be) the honor system is definatly not non-obvious building on the first. So the honor system certainly shouldn't pass.
PS, I think software patents are bad, but in the framework that they are legel there is a case to be made for one-click.
I am more pissed that software patents tend to patent ideas and not implementations (the source code). If a software patent required the code to the application, whch would then become public domain it would make a lot more sense.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
You are oversimplifying the system. How it works is: When you have the money, just endebt the politicians to you (with camaign contributions of course), who will then avoid appointing judges unsympathetic to your causes. It's the american way.
cat * >> sig
Surprise! Your 9th grade social studies book was wrong. America is not a Democracy, and it's not a Republic either. It's an Oligarchy disguised as one or the other. People like Jeff Bezos aren't merely above the law, they get to surf on it.
Companies should compete on their implementation of ideas rather than the ideas themselves. Amazon's implementation of 1-click is so excellent that it makes me want to shop there rather than anywhere else. Amazon's attempt to patent 1-click makes me want to shop elsewhere.
I hereby claim my patent: 1-stick.
"A method that allows multiple users to, using a single mouse operation, to stick their finger up at Amazon."
This may be a nutty idea (as I'm still hungover this morning), but let's say you coded a form to accept a click input, then submitted to a second page which then did the second 'click' via JavaScript or some other silly method, would that violate the patent? Technically it's a two-click method, but would appear as a one-click method to the user.
Have they patented the process, or have they patented the 'look and feel' - which cannot be patented (to the best of my knowledge)?
From my viewpoint, spending money ought to require
more than just one click. The potential for
accidental purchaces is too high. I'm totally OK
with nobody but Amazon being allowed to do this.
Better would be if Amazon couldn't use it either.
Just imagine:
Oh no! My cat bought a Brittany Spears CD!
Did anyone else get the feeling from the Lawyer Press release that they were disapointed that the case was over so quickly? Loss of billable hours and all that?
-Ariel
Triple clicking appears to be the way to go, then.
Unless MS already patented 'Repeated clicking on a window in order to elicit response'.