Amazon One-Click Patent to be Re-Examined

timrichardson writes "A New Zealand actor, frustrated by a poor shopping experience, has successfully requested that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office review the correctness of Amazon's infamous One-Click patent. An examiner for the agency ruled that the re-examination requested by Peter Calveley had raised a 'substantial new question of patentability' affecting Amazon's patent, according to a document outlining the agency's decision."

Comments

Blogs can be useful

[Eloquence]

This is Peter's more frequently updated blog than the one linked in the article. It has an update on the reexamination request. According to Peter, "The reexamination takes aims at claim 11 and some dependent claims, which in my opinion are the broadest and most restrictive claims in the patent. If Amazon can be made to narrow them, it could allow others to implement innovative and interesting ways of shopping with "one-click" (This isn't legal or professional advice- see the disclaimer below)."

As the article points out, Peter raised the money necessary to pay the reexamination fee through donations. I don't know what his chances are of being successful, but it certainly shows that blogs can be useful in allowing more people to participate in processes that were previously mainly used by businesses. Maybe they'll raise the reexamination fee to keep up with technical progress. ;-)

Re:Great, but...

[UbuntuDupe]

What's important to note is why this particular patent, even more so than other software patents, is stupid. It's stupid because it doesn't patent *how* you accomplish something, just *that* you accomplish it. It would be like patenting "computing numbers quickly" rather than patenting "a specific chip that can compute numbers quickly".