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]

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

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.

On May 12, 2006, the USPTO ordered a reexamination^[4] of the "One-Click" patent, based on a request filed by Peter Calveley.^[5] 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.^[6] 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.^[7] In March 2010, the reexamined and amended patent was allowed.^[8][9]

Amazon's U.S. patent expired on September 11, 2017.^[10]

In Europe, a patent application^[11] 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.^[12]

A related gift-ordering patent was granted in 2003, but revoked in 2007 following an opposition.^[13]

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.^[14]

Licensing

Apple Inc.

Amazon.com in 2000 licensed 1-Click ordering to Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) for use on its online store.^[15][16] Apple subsequently added 1-Click ordering to the iTunes Store^[17] and iPhoto.^[18] 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.^[19] Barnes & Noble had developed a way to design around the patent by requiring shoppers to make a second click to confirm their purchase.^[20][21] 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.^[22]

In response to the lawsuit, the Free Software Foundation urged a boycott of Amazon.com.^[23] The boycott was lifted by GNU in September 2002.^[24][25]

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, Shel et al., "Method and system for placing a purchase order via a communications network", published 1999-09-28, assigned to Amazon.com Inc. 
4. Hutcheon, Stephen (May 23, 2006). . Sydney Morning Herald. Archived from the original on December 11, 2008. Retrieved November 19, 2008.
5. "IGDMLGD Blog". from the original on September 25, 2007. Retrieved November 19, 2008.
6. "Examiner Office Action dated Oct 9, 2007 for reexamination serial number 90/007,946". USPTO. from the original on January 14, 2009. Retrieved November 19, 2008.
7. . Out-law.com. November 23, 2007. Archived from the original on December 11, 2008. Retrieved November 19, 2008.
8. . Archived from the original on April 13, 2010. Retrieved April 13, 2010.
9. . Archived from the original on April 19, 2014. Retrieved April 13, 2010.
10. "Amazon's patent on one-click payments to expire". Business Insider.
11. 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 2001-09-19, assigned to Amazon.com Inc. , since rejected.
12. Jeremy Kirk (July 7, 2011). "Europe Rejects One-click-to-buy Amazon Patent Application". IDG News Service.
13. . European Patent Office. December 7, 2007. Archived from the original on June 4, 2009. Retrieved May 13, 2009.
14. "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.
15. Wolverton, Troy (September 18, 2000). . CNET News.com. Archived from the original on February 3, 2009. Retrieved November 19, 2008.
16. "Apple Licenses Amazon.com 1-Click Patent and Trademark". Apple. September 18, 2000.
17. . Apple Inc. Archived from the original on December 7, 2008. Retrieved November 19, 2008.
18. "iPhoto 6.0 Help: Turning 1-Click ordering on and off". Apple Inc. from the original on January 21, 2008. Retrieved November 19, 2008.
19. Wolverton, Troy (March 6, 2002). "Amazon, Barnes&Noble settle patent suit". CNET. from the original on July 30, 2009. Retrieved April 20, 2009.
20. [Claim 1 of the patent is limited to orders being placed "in response to only a single action being performed"
21. . O'Reilly Media. Archived from the original on December 18, 2007. Retrieved December 30, 2007.
22. Wolverton, Troy (March 6, 2002). . CNET. Archived from the original on February 3, 2009. Retrieved November 19, 2008.
23. "Free Software Foundation (fsf)'s status on Tuesday, 13-Oct-2020 15:53:03 UTC". Free Software Foundation.
24. "(Formerly) Boycott Amazon!". GNU.
25. "Amazon Advertising". www.adcanyon.com.