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Amazon One-Click Patent to be Re-Examined

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the more-than-one-click dept.

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."

4 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. Fee, schmee by Grrr · · Score: 5, Interesting
    From the AP story via Yahoo! :

    Calveley wrote on his Web log that his crusade is revenge for an "annoyingly slow" book delivery from Amazon. He used the blog to raise the $2,520 reexamination fee.


    Dang - is that all it took? I'd be willing to throw some ad-click revenue toward getting some of these other ridiculous patents "reexamined"...

    (Irritating, but predictable, that someone has to pay, and the USPTO can't take the initiative to reexamine extremely controversial patents otherwise.)

    <grrr />
  2. Re:It's about time by astralbat · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you RTFA it says that another patent for the single-click method was given 18 months earlier.

    This can only mean that if Amazon has to give this up, it enable someone else to sue instead.

  3. Not saying I like the patent by Macblaster · · Score: 5, Interesting

    But the reason why it was granted and why they want to defend it to the end is because it buffers against buyer's regret. How many times have you added a book to your shopping cart, only to think about it, and then remove it. With One-Click, the item is already purchased at the first click, and it would take much more effort to go and cancel the order once thought about. Ingenious idea, and probably defendable under current patent law, unless of course the entire concept of patenting buisness models is done away with.

  4. Re:Great, but... by UbuntuDupe · · Score: 5, Informative

    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".

    --
    Apology to Ubuntu forum.