One-Click Patent is One Step Closer To Being Overturned

Amazon raised the ire ofthe Web development community in 1999 for their patent on one-click ordering. Several weeks later, they sued Barnes & Noble over their use of one-click ordering. Barnes & Noble has maintained that the technology was widely used before the patent was filed, and that Amazon’s patent was invalid.

Now InternetNews is reporting that Barnes & Noble has won a preliminary victory in the courts. A judge has ruled that Barnes & Noble’s challenge to the patent has ‘raised substantial questions as to the validity’ of Amazon’s patent. In the ruling, the judge overturned the preliminary injunction that has kept Barnes & Noble from using any sort of one-click shopping technology.

Kudos to the judge! Amazon’s patent covers the concept of allowing a shopper to check out from an e-commerce site by using information that was previously stored on the site. Amazon patented a technology and method for doing business that was already widely used around the Internet. The patent is absurd as Open Market patenting most of the basic concepts of e-commerce or Compton’s patent on multimedia.