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Amazon’s 1-Click Patent Rejected By European Patent Office

Amazon’s One-Click Feature

An Appeals Board at the European Patent Office (EPO) has ruled that Amazon.com’s 1-Click patent is “obvious” in view of the prior art. 1-Click buying refers to a technique in which online purchases can be made with a single click, using payment information entered by the user previously.

As pointed out in the decision, Web sites use HTTP which is essentially a “stateless” protocol (it does not “remember” things previously done). However, the notion of using cookies to store information on user computers for use later was known in the prior art. Though the EPO Appeals Board conceded that the notion of using cookies to store payment information was not known previously, it was deemed to be obvious in view of the use of cookies generally along with the existence of shopping carts in e-commerce sites at the time.

The 23-page decision is available here.