Amazon.com 1-Click patent survives the bounty challenge

The challenge was launched last October on the site by Tim O'Reilly, a publisher and long-time critic of Amazon.com’s business method patent. O'Reilly offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who could provide evidence demonstrating that certain elements in the 1-Click patent were invented before Amazon.com’s patent filing date.

While nobody submitted an exact match to win the reward, BountyQuest claims that there were many submissions relevant to the patent, which it believes may have a bearing on Amazon's ability to enforce their patent.

The 1-Click patent has been the subject of controversy ever since Amazon.com enforced it against rival Barnes & Noble.com during the Christmas season of 1999. 1-Click quickly became a poster child for the raging controversy over internet and business method patents, prompting O'Reilly, a proponent of open internet standards, to post an open letter to Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, asking him to relinquish rights to the patent on the grounds that 1-Click shopping was obvious. Bezos stood by the 1-Click patent but agreed with O'Reilly that meaningful reform of the patent system is necessary. Both invested in BountyQuest to support a market-based way to test patent validity.

BountyQuest received 30 submissions for the 1-Click posting, including evidence that was not discovered by the USPTO or by the litigants in the Barnes & Noble case. Among the more imaginative submissions were episodes of Star Trek (use of “replicators” to place single-click orders) and Cheers (Norm ordering beer). There was also a 1993 Doonesbury comic strip describing "Boopsie's virtual shopping spree," with its “Just-Point Shopping" which bills your credit card when you point at an item.

The most relevant submission was a European and US patent filed in 1995 that describes a system of TV shopping with billing and delivery information pre-entered.

"We were astonished by the breadth and quality of the prior art evidence that we received for the 1-Click posting," said Charles Cella, founder and CEO of BountyQuest. "Try looking for evidence like a CD-ROM , an out-of-print conference paper, or a foreign language document using an on-line search engine. Ask any patent attorney, and they will tell you how costly and difficult it is to locate foreign and off-line literature."

BountyQuest has paid $50,000 in cash rewards to scientists, academics, and engineers who track down hard-to-find literature, known in the patent field as prior art.