Amazon's 1-Click patent decimated by dark armies of Sauron 19 Oct 2007

OUT-LAW reports that most of the claims set out in Amazon's controversial 1-Click patent have been rejected by the US Patent Office. This decision follows a long campaign by New Zealander Peter Calveley - a motion capture performer who appeared as part of Sauron's evil armies in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Frustated at having to wait too long for a parcel from Amazon to arrive, Calveley compiled a 22-page list of evidence that he considered "prior art" and submitted it to the US Patent Office for their consideration. Only original creations can be patented, thus an invention that has been described in prior art is ineligible ("Prior art" includes any information that has been made available to the public in any form before the patent application is filed).

Calveley's evidence of prior art included a patent filed in April 1994 that describes a one-button ordering process for interactive TV, stating that: "When a viewer wishes to order an item, a button is pressed on the TV remote control. This button signals the client computer...to solicit the information necessary to place the order." Another of the patents he unearthed, filed more than one year before Amazon's, describes an "online secured financial transaction system through electronic media", of which the US Patent Office noted describes a "method for ordering an item using a client system...comprising: displaying information identifying the item and displaying an indication of a single action that is to be performed to order the identified item...The product may be purchased by clicking on a single action button 'BUY'".

This evidence caused the US Patent Office to reject 21 of the 26 claims set out in Amazon's 1-Click patent (aka "Method and system for placing a purchase order via a communications network"). Only five of the claims - numbered 6 to 10 - were deemed "patentable and/or confirmed."