1-Click

Last updated

Amazon.com offering the option to either add an item to the user's cart, or purchase it immediately using 1-Click Amazon 1-Click option.png
Amazon.com offering the option to either add an item to the user's cart, or purchase it immediately using 1-Click

1-Click, also called one-click or one-click buying, is the technique of allowing customers to make purchases with the payment information needed to complete the purchase having been entered by the user previously. [1] More particularly, it allows an online shopper using an Internet marketplace to purchase an item without having to use shopping cart software. Instead of manually inputting billing and shipping information for a purchase, a user can use one-click buying to use a predefined address and credit card number to purchase one or more items. Since the expiration of Amazon's patent, there has been an advent of checkout experience platforms, such as ShopPay, Simpler, PeachPay, Zplit, and Bolt which offer similar one-click checkout flows. [2]

Contents

Patent

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued a patent [3] for this technique to Amazon.com in September 1999. Amazon.com also owns the "1-Click" trademark. [4]

On May 12, 2006, the USPTO ordered a reexamination [5] of the "One-Click" patent, based on a request filed by Peter Calveley. [6] Calveley cited as prior art an earlier e-commerce patent and the Digicash electronic cash system.

On October 9, 2007, the USPTO issued an office action in the reexamination which confirmed the patentability of claims 6 to 10 of the patent. [7] The patent examiner, however, rejected claims 1 to 5 and 11 to 26. In November 2007, Amazon responded by amending the broadest claims (1 and 11) to restrict them to a shopping cart model of commerce. They have also submitted several hundred references for the examiner to consider. [8] In March 2010, the reexamined and amended patent was allowed. [9] [10]

Amazon's U.S. patent expired on September 11, 2017. [11]

In Europe, a patent application [12] on 1-Click ordering was filed with the European Patent Office (EPO) but was rejected by the EPO in 2007 due to obviousness; the decision was upheld in 2011. [13]

A related gift-ordering patent was granted in 2003, but revoked in 2007 following an opposition. [14]

In Canada, the Federal Court of Canada held that the One click patent could not be rejected as a pure business method since it had a physical effect. The Court remanded the application to the Canadian patent office for a reexamination. [15]

Licensing

Apple Inc.

Amazon.com in 2000 licensed 1-Click ordering to Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) for use on its online store. [16] [17] Apple subsequently added 1-Click ordering to the iTunes Store [18] and iPhoto. [19] Apple paid $1 million to license the patent.

Barnes & Noble

Amazon filed a patent infringement lawsuit in October 1999 in response to Barnes & Noble's offering a 1-Click ordering option called "Express Lane". After reviewing the evidence, a judge issued a preliminary injunction ordering Barnes & Noble to stop offering Express Lane until the case was settled. [20] Barnes & Noble had developed a way to design around the patent by requiring shoppers to make a second click to confirm their purchase. [21] [22] The lawsuit was settled in 2002. The terms of the settlement, including whether or not Barnes & Noble took a license to the patent or paid any money to Amazon, were not disclosed. [23]

In response to the lawsuit, the Free Software Foundation urged a boycott of Amazon.com. [24] The boycott was lifted by GNU in September 2002. [25] [26]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amazon (company)</span> American multinational technology company

Amazon.com, Inc., doing business as Amazon, is an American multinational technology company engaged in e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos in Bellevue, Washington, the company originally started as an online marketplace for books but gradually expanded its offerings to include a wide range of product categories, referred to as "The Everything Store". Today, Amazon is considered one of the Big Five American technology companies, the other four being Alphabet, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barnes & Noble</span> American bookseller and retailer

Barnes & Noble Booksellers is an American bookseller with the largest number of retail outlets in the United States. The company operates approximately 600 retail stores across all 50 U.S. states.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">United States Patent and Trademark Office</span> United States national patent bureau

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark registration authority for the United States. The USPTO's headquarters are in Alexandria, Virginia, after a 2005 move from the Crystal City area of neighboring Arlington, Virginia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eolas</span> American technology firm

Eolas is a United States technology firm formed as a spin-off from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), in order to commercialize UCSF's patents for work done there by Eolas' co-founders, as part of the Visible Embryo Project. The company was founded in 1994 by Dr. Michael Doyle, Rachelle Tunik, David Martin, and Cheong Ang from the UCSF Center for Knowledge Management (CKM). The company was created at the request of UCSF, and was founded by the inventors of the university's patents.

The OncoMouse or Harvard mouse is a type of laboratory mouse that has been genetically modified using modifications designed by Philip Leder and Timothy A Stewart of Harvard University to carry a specific gene called an activated oncogene. The activated oncogene significantly increases the mouse's susceptibility to cancer, and thus makes the mouse a suitable model for cancer research.

Business method patents are a class of patents which disclose and claim new methods of doing business. This includes new types of e-commerce, insurance, banking and tax compliance etc. Business method patents are a relatively new species of patent and there have been several reviews investigating the appropriateness of patenting business methods. Nonetheless, they have become important assets for both independent inventors and major corporations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patent troll</span> Pejorative term related to intellectual property

In international law and business, patent trolling or patent hoarding is a categorical or pejorative term applied to a person or company that attempts to enforce patent rights against accused infringers far beyond the patent's actual value or contribution to the prior art, often through hardball legal tactics Patent trolls often do not manufacture products or supply services based upon the patents in question. However, some entities, which do not practice their asserted patent, may not be considered "patent trolls", when they license their patented technologies on reasonable terms in advance.

NTP, Inc. is a Virginia-based patent holding company founded in 1992 by the late inventor Thomas J. Campana Jr. and Donald E. Stout. The company's primary asset is a portfolio of 50 US patents and additional pending US and international patent applications. These patents and patent applications disclose inventions in the fields of wireless email and RF Antenna design. The named inventors include Andrew Andros and Thomas Campana. About half of the US patents were originally assigned to Telefind Corporation, a Florida-based company partly owned by Campana.

The multinational technology corporation Apple Inc. has been a participant in various legal proceedings and claims since it began operation and, like its competitors and peers, engages in litigation in its normal course of business for a variety of reasons. In particular, Apple is known for and promotes itself as actively and aggressively enforcing its intellectual property interests. From the 1980s to the present, Apple has been plaintiff or defendant in civil actions in the United States and other countries. Some of these actions have determined significant case law for the information technology industry and many have captured the attention of the public and media. Apple's litigation generally involves intellectual property disputes, but the company has also been a party in lawsuits that include antitrust claims, consumer actions, commercial unfair trade practice suits, defamation claims, and corporate espionage, among other matters.

In United States patent law, a reexamination is a process whereby anyone—third party or inventor—can have a U.S. patent reexamined by a patent examiner to verify that the subject matter it claims is patentable. To have a patent reexamined, an interested party must submit prior art, in the form of patents or printed publications, that raises a "substantial new question of patentability". The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act makes substantial changes to the U.S. patent system, including new mechanisms for challenging patents at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. One of the new mechanisms is a post-grant review proceeding, which will provide patent challengers expanded bases on which to attack patents.

The involvement of the public in patent examination is used in some forms to help identifying relevant prior art and, more generally, to help assessing whether patent applications and inventions meet the requirements of patent law, such as novelty, inventive step or non-obviousness, and sufficiency of disclosure.

MedImmune, Inc. v. Genentech, Inc., 549 U.S. 118 (2007), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States involving patent law. It arose from a lawsuit filed by MedImmune which challenged one of the Cabilly patents issued to Genentech. One of the central issues was whether a licensee retained the right to challenge a licensed patent, or whether this right was forfeited upon signing of the license agreement. The case related indirectly to past debate over whether the US should change to a first to file patent system - in 2011, President Obama signed the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, which shifted the United States to a first-inventor-to-file patent system.

Amazon Kindle is a series of e-readers designed and marketed by Amazon. Amazon Kindle devices enable users to browse, buy, download, and read e-books, newspapers, magazines, Audible audiobooks, and other digital media via wireless networking to the Kindle Store. The hardware platform, which Amazon subsidiary Lab126 developed, began as a single device in 2007. Currently, it comprises a range of devices, including e-readers with E Ink electronic paper displays and Kindle applications on all major computing platforms. All Kindle devices integrate with Windows and macOS file systems and Kindle Store content and, as of March 2018, the store had over six million e-books available in the United States.

The Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) is a set of initiatives for providing accelerated patent prosecution procedures by sharing information between some patent offices. It also permits each participating patent office to benefit from the work previously done by the other patent office, with the goal of reducing examination workload and improving patent quality.

In United States patent law, an inter partes review (IPR) is a procedure for challenging the validity of a United States patent before the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

This page is a timeline of e-commerce. Major launches, milestones and other major events are included.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of Amazon</span>

Amazon is an American multinational technology company which focuses on e-commerce, cloud computing, and digital streaming. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential economic and cultural forces in the world", and is one of the world's most valuable brands.

<i>Amazon.com, Inc. v. Barnesandnoble.com, Inc.</i> 2001 U.S. Federal Court Case

Amazon. com, Inc. v. Barnesandnoble. com, Inc., 337 F.3d 1024, was a court ruling at the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The ruling was an important early cyberlaw precedent on the matter of the technologies that enable e-commerce and whether such technologies are eligible for patent protection.

Shel Kaphan is an American computer programmer who was the first employee of technology company Amazon. Working there from 1994 to 1999, he co-wrote the first Amazon website, wrote the product review system, and contributed to 1-Click. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos described Kaphan as "the most important person ever in the history of Amazon.com," and Brad Stone wrote in his book about Amazon, The Everything Store, that "Kaphan was an introverted hacker with an idealistic streak and little intuitive leadership ability."

References

  1. "Amazon.com Help: About 1-Click Ordering". www.amazon.com.
  2. "Payment Startup Bolt Sued by Its Most Prominent Customer". Bloomberg.com. April 26, 2022. Retrieved April 27, 2022.
  3. US 5960411,Hartman, Peri; Bezos, Jeffrey P.& Kaphan, Shelet al.,"Method and system for placing a purchase order via a communications network",published 1999-09-28, assigned to Amazon.com Inc.
  4. Nickelsburg, Monica (September 11, 2017). "Amazon's '1-Click' patent expires today, and soon you'll be able to accidentally order stuff across the entire internet".
  5. Hutcheon, Stephen (May 23, 2006). "Kiwi actor v Amazon.com". Sydney Morning Herald. Archived from the original on December 11, 2008. Retrieved November 19, 2008.
  6. "IGDMLGD Blog". Archived from the original on September 25, 2007. Retrieved November 19, 2008.
  7. "Examiner Office Action dated Oct 9, 2007 for reexamination serial number 90/007,946". USPTO. Archived from the original on January 14, 2009. Retrieved November 19, 2008.
  8. "Amazon surrenders on One-Click shopping monopoly". Out-law.com. November 23, 2007. Archived from the original on December 11, 2008. Retrieved November 19, 2008.
  9. "Tech Flash". Archived from the original on April 13, 2010. Retrieved April 13, 2010.
  10. "Electronista". Archived from the original on April 19, 2014. Retrieved April 13, 2010.
  11. "Amazon's patent on one-click payments to expire". Business Insider .
  12. EPapplication 1134680,Hartman, Peri; Kaphan, Shel& Bezos, Jeffrey P.et al.,"Method and system for placing a purchase order via a communications network",published 2001-09-19, assigned to Amazon.com Inc. , since rejected.
  13. Jeremy Kirk (July 7, 2011). "Europe Rejects One-click-to-buy Amazon Patent Application". IDG News Service.
  14. "EPO revokes Amazon's "Gift Ordering" patent after opposition hearing". European Patent Office. December 7, 2007. Archived from the original on June 4, 2009. Retrieved May 13, 2009.
  15. "Amazon.com, Inc. and The Attorney General of Canada and The Commissioner of Patents, 2010 FC 1011, October 14, 2010" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on November 4, 2010.
  16. Wolverton, Troy (September 18, 2000). "Apple licenses Amazon's 1-Click". CNET News.com. Archived from the original on February 3, 2009. Retrieved November 19, 2008.
  17. "Apple Licenses Amazon.com 1-Click Patent and Trademark". Apple. September 18, 2000.
  18. "iTunes Store Terms of Sale". Apple Inc. Archived from the original on December 7, 2008. Retrieved November 19, 2008.
  19. "iPhoto 6.0 Help: Turning 1-Click ordering on and off". Apple Inc. Archived from the original on January 21, 2008. Retrieved November 19, 2008.
  20. Wolverton, Troy (March 6, 2002). "Amazon, Barnes&Noble settle patent suit". CNET. Archived from the original on July 30, 2009. Retrieved April 20, 2009.
  21. [Claim 1 of the patent is limited to orders being placed "in response to only a single action being performed"
  22. "My Conversation with Jeff Bezos". O'Reilly Media. Archived from the original on December 18, 2007. Retrieved December 30, 2007.
  23. Wolverton, Troy (March 6, 2002). "Amazon, Barnes&Noble settle patent suit". CNET. Archived from the original on February 3, 2009. Retrieved November 19, 2008.
  24. "Free Software Foundation (fsf)'s status on Tuesday, 13-Oct-2020 15:53:03 UTC". Free Software Foundation .
  25. "(Formerly) Boycott Amazon!". GNU .
  26. "Amazon Advertising". www.adcanyon.com.