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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.
"And it only took many many years to remove what would have been obvious to the most incompetent web developer."
You know, I think it's unreasonable that patents can so greatly reduce people's freedom to create things, for fear that some of it may infringe upon some fairly trivial patent... Obvious or not, it places an unreasonable burden on developers, to use what they've learned except for those things they've learned about which are patented.
But was Amazon One-Click really "obvious" before they adopted it? I mean, the whole idea of
1: Storing user information (pretty obvious and common)
2: Launching a user order as soon as they click "buy it" (Not too challenging, except for the other issues that #3 solves)
3: Ensuring that situations where a user accidentally orders something can be readily corrected by the user (basically boils down to giving them the opportunity to back out)
It's easy to say the idea is obvious once someone else has thought of it and presented it to you - but was it "obvious" to people before Amazon did it? If so, then why was Amazon the first?
Bow-ties are cool.
I helped to start Amazon (I was the 2nd employee there). I've spoken out against the 1 click patent in the past. However, this comment "And it only took many many years to remove what would have been obvious to the most incompetent web developer" is not the reason why the patent should be permanently rejected. 1 click shopping was "new" at the time - if it was obvious, we would have done it right from the beginning on the web site. The issue with 1 click is not whether or not it was obvious to a web developer. It is whether or not business method patents that fundamentally simply map a practice in the non-online world ("put this on my account") to the online world ("1 click") should be permitted.
I don't believe that they should, and I am glad to see the patent struck down.
AFAIK, diddly squat.
The company that liscensed the patent goes "It's all the PTO's fault!!11 one", and there's not much anyone can do. If the liscence involved a per-device fee, you can stop paying that, but anything you've already paid is gone.
IANAL
IMHO, fixing that would go a long way towards fixing the patent situation. If the patent holder had to pay back all licensing and attorney fees for a patent ruled invalid, the patent holders themselves would be far more careful in asserting rights for "inventions" that are not likely to stand up to scrutiny.