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Ninth Anniversary of Amazon 1-Click Injunction

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the oh-the-times-we've-had dept.

theodp writes "Nine years ago Monday, Amazon kicked off the Holiday Season by slapping Barnes and Noble with a court injunction barring BN from using a checkout feature that Amazon said represented illegal copying of its patented 1-Click technology. 'We're pleased that Judge Pechman recognized the innovation underlying our 1-Click feature,' said Jeff Bezos in a press release. But an Appellate Court wasn't quite as impressed with Amazon's innovation. Nor were USPTO Examiners who were asked to take another look at the merits of Amazon's 1-Click patent claims. Still, 1-Click lives on, although Amazon's lawyers are currently fighting two separate rejections by USPTO Examiners, burying USPTO Examiners in paper, and employing canceling-and-refiling tactics that some may find reminiscent of Eddie Haskell's chess end-game strategy. So much for Amazon-led patent reform."

9 of 68 comments (clear)

  1. Customer Backlash? by FrozenFOXX · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You know, it's a bit of a shame this ever happened. Normally I'm a fan of Amazon but this kinda tactic has made me consider other places to buy from first ever since it happened.

    I can't imagine I'm the only one who reconsidered Amazon purchases because of things like this.

    --
    "Just a fox, a whisper."
    1. Re:Customer Backlash? by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes, I did reconsider Amazon purchases as this went down. But at the end of the day I shop with Amazon for the same reason I shop with WalMart -- I might have philosophical disagreements with the company, but at the end of the day they provide a damned convenient, cheap and effective way of buying what I need/want.

      It's the same way I feel about FOSS vs. proprietary software -- I didn't make Linux my primary OS until it met most of my needs. I still use proprietary video drivers because they work best. I run Windows in a virtual machine on the same box because for a few (and increasingly fewer) things there is no practical complete replacement for Corel Draw or Photoshop -- well, you get the idea.

      At the end of the day I need to get stuff done. If Amazon does what I need, I set aside my philosophical differences and plunk down my money. Call me a hypocrite.

      --
      My blog
    2. Re:Customer Backlash? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You're a hypocrite. Well, maybe. But you asked me to do it.

      Your argument fails because while Walmart may be more convenient than another store, Amazon is no easier than B&N or any number of internet shopping sites. Finding an alternative store is trivial on the internet.

    3. Re:Customer Backlash? by rodrigoandrade · · Score: 2, Insightful

      > I can't imagine I'm the only one who reconsidered Amazon purchases because of things like this.

      Yes you are. Bezos could be using Amazon's profits to fund Al Qaeda operations for all I care. If the product I want is cheaper than a competitor's, I'll buy from Amazon.

  2. How much money is at stake? by Samschnooks · · Score: 2, Insightful

    All this litigation must be costing Amazon a fortune! Are they expecting to sue B&N and others to recover their costs and maybe make money if they actually prevail?!?

  3. But the one click was all she copywrote by GMonkeyLouie · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't know how you could patent a kind of interface, though. Isn't that like patenting a particular way of arranging your furniture? It's definitely not an invention, it's a way of presenting an existing invention, no?

    I think that should be copyright territory, like, "Whatever you do, you can't call your system a '1-click' system", instead of what they are saying which is, "You can't use an interface that resembles our '1-click' system or functions in a similar way".

    Does that make sense?

  4. This has never made sense to me : by ShooterNeo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why doesn't the patent office just charge fees sufficient to fund enough examiners to get anything done in a month? Meaning, they should be allowed to charge whatever fees they need in order to, BY LAW, respond to anything filed in their office within 30 days. So if you send them 10,000 pages of documents, you have to pay $5 a page or whatever it costs them to employ an educated person to read and respond to said documents.

  5. Re:Tim O'Reilly: useful idiot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    AC was pretty uninformative in his post about Tim O'Reilly's role in this mess. Why not elaborate, or at least provide a link?

    What about Obama's role in this mess? Did he vote to deny Amazon's 1-click patent? I think not! Look at what he has done to us, and now he's going to be our president! ;)

    But seriously. From a quick search on Google, it looks like Tim O'Reilly initially protested 1-click shopping, but then something changed and he joined with Jeff Bezos to reform patents. At the same time he, perhaps, dropped his stance against 1-click shopping. But if you know something more, or have a good link with an explanation it would be way more informative than simply mentioning a name in passing. Please?

    (I gave up moderating this thread to ask for this, figuring that modding your comment down would do no good for anyone, so please show me the info.)

  6. Get back to business, Amazon! by Heddahenrik · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Stop fooling around with crap like this! It's simply not worth the problem and just makes the world a worse place. Maybe it creates a few problems for some competitor, but Amazon's real competitor is that people can buy stuff off-line. Other online competitors help Amazon both selling and inventing, exactly like your lawyers don't.

    If you want to use your useless lawyers to something I would suggest suing some banks and fix so that you can deposit my income from you into a non-American bank account.

    Another real problem is that it's expensive to order stuff internationally. Just a button with "Buy this from another country" (So that one can see if it's available from a closer Amazon and maybe possible to pre-order for really cheap shipping) would be great for me and my international customers. I personally often don't care if it takes a month to get some stuff, as long as it's cheap (Like the pirate-flags for $2) and the popular stuff is available from all Amazon shops so just ship from the closest.

    It's also a pain for affiliates when someone reads their review of a book, and then buy it in Japanese from the Amazon in Japan and the affiliate gets nothing unless they register there too (which demands knowledge in Japanese).

    All of this is more important for Amazon to fix than this stupid patent-fight.