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 calledone-click orone-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 anonline shopper using anInternet marketplace to purchase an item without having to useshopping 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 andcredit 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]
On May 12, 2006, the USPTO ordered areexamination[5] of the "One-Click" patent, based on a request filed by Peter Calveley.[6] Calveley cited asprior art an earlier e-commerce patent and the Digicashelectronic cash system.
On October 9, 2007, the USPTO issued anoffice action in the reexamination which confirmed the patentability of claims 6 to 10 of the patent.[7] Thepatent 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 theEuropean Patent Office (EPO) but was rejected by the EPO in 2007 due toobviousness; the decision was upheld in 2011.[13]
A related gift-ordering patent was granted in 2003, but revoked in 2007 following anopposition.[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]
Amazon.com in 2000 licensed 1-Click ordering to Apple Computer (nowApple Inc.) for use on its online store.[16][17] Apple subsequently added 1-Click ordering to theiTunes Store[18] andiPhoto.[19] Apple paid $1 million to license the patent.
Amazon filed a patent infringement lawsuit in October 1999 in response toBarnes & Noble's offering a 1-Click ordering option called "Express Lane". After reviewing the evidence, a judge issued apreliminary injunction ordering Barnes & Noble to stop offering Express Lane until the case was settled.[20] Barnes & Noble had developed a way todesign 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]
^US 5960411, Hartman, Peri; Bezos, Jeffrey P. & Kaphan, Shel et al., "Method and system for placing a purchase order via a communications network", published September 28, 1999, assigned toAmazon.com Inc.
^Hutcheon, Stephen (May 23, 2006)."Kiwi actor v Amazon.com".Sydney Morning Herald. Archived fromthe original on December 11, 2008. RetrievedNovember 19, 2008.
^"IGDMLGD Blog".Archived from the original on September 25, 2007. RetrievedNovember 19, 2008.
^EP application 1134680, Hartman, Peri; Kaphan, Shel & Bezos, Jeffrey P. et al., "Method and system for placing a purchase order via a communications network", published September 19, 2001, assigned toAmazon.com Inc., since rejected.
