USPTO Rejects Amazon's One-Click Patent

igdmlgd writes "A while ago I filed a reexamination request for the Amazon.com one-click patent and recently checked out the USPTO online file wrapper -it seems they have rejected all the claims I requested they look at and more!" And it only took many many years to remove what would have been obvious to the most incompetent web developer.

Comments

Register Article

[stoolpigeon]

here is the printer friendly version of an article with some good info. about this over at the Register.

Re:Register Article

[PatentMagus]

When a previous patent is used for a 102 (novelty) rejection it does not mean that the invention was already patented, only that it was disclosed. It is patented only if it is claimed by the prior patent. Usually, the rejection is based on the prior patent's specification but not it's claims. Sorry, haven't researched deeply enough to see what was claimed in the prior art for one-click.

Also, "copyright attaches when pen goes to paper". What you meant was that a good way to keep the obvious from being patented is is to have an expression of the idea published published first. The prior art has to be published and available. It also helps if the published work is a printed one. I'm currently trying to get some videos admitted as prior art, but am not sure how it will go.

Not quite...

[theantipop]

There was a non-final rejection mailed on October 9. There is still at least one more round of prosecution before Amazon's lawyers decide to choose any number of paths to continue prosecution beyond a final rejection.

Re:Counter sue?

[jcr]

Chances are that anyone who's paid up for a license from Amazon is SOL, since the contract would almost certainly include a provision that they can't sue even if the patent ends up getting spiked. Anyone who hasn't executed a contract with Amazon, but has incurred expenses in defending themselves might be able to recover some damages.

-jcr

Re:Obvious...

[jcr]

But was Amazon One-Click really "obvious" before they adopted it?

Yes. That's why everyone was so upset about it.

-jcr

Patent was for a result, not a process or design

[ThinkThis]

This patent was for a result rather than a process or a design. The concept of "1-click" just means better performance. It would be like giving Car company a patent on a 70 MPG car, or Starbucks a patent on getting $5.00 bucks for a cup of coffee.

Re:Huh?

[PlatyPaul]

Here you go. It's a decent summary of the situation, albeit not the most in-depth.

You can take a look at the original patent, too, but that would require a second click.

They weren't the first

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon wasn't the first, that's why it got rejected. Someone else described the ideas before them.

And honestely, if you can't come up with a button-to-order-really-fast yourself, there is something wrong with you.

Why was Amazon the first to file such a patent? Because the internet online business wasn't big back then. That's all.

Re:Whine enuf and you win

[IBitOBear]

Actually it was extremely obvious. It was also considered an extremely bad idea. Anybody who has ever mis-clicked anything will know why it is a bad idea if they take a moment to generalize their knowledge.

Its a bad idea for exactly the same reason that most erase features of most operating systems erase to a clipboard or a trash folder of some sort.

See, people click on and mis-operate all sorts of things in all sorts of circumstances.

Amazon is simply big and slow enough to be able to afford to do a ship-and-return or a block-that-order action when the customer screws up. It was also well-funded enough that it could operate at a loss for something like three years from startup and not die outright.

Smaller, more responsive, less funded business would have gone bankrupt long ago. And such businesses could never have survived under the onslaught of "I didn't order this $3,000.00 flat screen so you credit back my card immediately and I'll get this back to you once you send me a shipping label" type calls.

One Click Shopping is bad business in most uses, so people didn't design their web pages that way till the "big players" came in with a lot of financial ballast.

"Do it in fewer steps" (e.g. in one step, e.g. without asking "are you sure") is _always_ obvious and is almost _never_ implemented because people screw up. And when it is implemented someone usually gets fired because its hard to teach people that they _should_ slow down and double check before they do something (a) expensive, (b) irreversible, or (c) embarrassing.

Consider: Didn't you think to double-check that order before you just (a) fired the nuke, (b) ordered a whole shipping container of toilet paper for a one-stall bathroom, (c) sold off the entire calculator division of HP, (d) fired everyone in human resources. (etc.)

Re:Obvious...

[hawk]

>I say that if something is obvious, even in hindsight, then it shouldn't be patentable.

The shaving cream can was challenged as obvious. The court agreed that it was, *in hindsight*, obvious, but the fact that the competitors had spent *millions* trying and failing to achieve the same thing showed that it was not obvious.

hawk

Re:Items 1 and 11

[Tacvek]

First of all note that claims 6-10 were not rejected. These contain much of the important part of the patent.

6. A client system for ordering an item comprising:

an identifier that identifies a customer;

a display component for displaying information identifying the item;

a single-action ordering component that in response to performance of only a single action, sends a request to a server system to order the identified item, the request including the identifier so that the server system can locate additional information needed to complete the order and so that the server system can fulfill the generated order to complete purchase of the item; and

a shopping cart ordering component that in response to performance of an add-to-shopping-cart action, sends a request to the server system to add the item to a shopping cart.

7. The client system of claim 6 wherein the display component is a browser.

8. The client system of claim 6 wherein the predefined action is the clicking of a mouse button.

9. A server system for generating an order comprising:

a shopping cart ordering component; and

a single-action ordering component including:

a data storage medium storing information for a plurality of users;

a receiving component for receiving requests to order an item, a request including an indication of one of the plurality of users, the request being sent in response to only a single action being performed; and

an order placement component that retrieves from the data storage medium information for the indicated user and that uses the retrieved information to place an order for the indicated user for the item; and

an order fulfillment component that completes a purchase of the item in accordance with the order placed by the single-action ordering component.

10. The server system of claim 9 wherein the request is sent by a client system in response to a single action being performed.

Now to answer your questions. Here are claims 1 and 11:

1 A method of placing an order for an item comprising:
under control of a client system,

displaying information identifying the item; and
in response to only a single action being performed, sending a request to order the item along with an identifier of a purchaser of the item to a server system;

under control of a single-action ordering component of the server system,

receiving the request;

retrieving additional information previously stored for the purchaser identified by the identifier in the received request; and

generating an order to purchase the requested item for the purchaser identified by the identifier in the received request using the retrieved additional information; and

fulfilling the generated order to complete purchase of the item

whereby the item is ordered without using a shopping cart ordering model.

11.A method for ordering an item using a client system, the method comprising:

displaying information identifying the item and displaying an indication of a single action that is to be performed to order the identified item; and

in response to only the indicated single action being performed, sending to a server system a request to order the identified item

whereby the item is ordered independently of a shopping cart model and the order is fulfilled to complete a purchase of the item.

Re:Interesting, but not great

[PatentMagus]

novelty (102) - a single piece of prior art has all the elements of the claimed invention

obvious (103) - a combination of prior art has all the elements of the claimed invention. Additionally, the typical knowledge of one practiced in the art of can be used as prior art.