The patent that started the Internet Business patent stampede may soon be in the public domain. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office recently rejected 21 of 26 patent claims in Amazon's famous 1-Click patent (No. 5,960,411).
Why did the PTO come down on Amazon? Pesky prior art undid the mighty online mall. In particular the PTO cited two older patents discovered after the patent issued: one for a one-button ordering process for interactive TV (No. 5,819,034) and the other for a method of purchasing online financial transactions with a "BUY" button (No. 5,729,594).
What did Amazon end up with? Only claims 6-10 made the cut, and, according to patent gadfly and Nolo author Greg Aharonian "claims 6-8 are client-side patents, hard to enforce." However, as Greg notes, "Claim 9 still basically claims one-click processing, though, and Amazon will be appealing the rejection."
Wonder why Amazon cared about the 1-click system? Because 60-65% of shopping carts are abandoned before checkout.
To learn more about the basics of the patent process, check out Nolo's Patents for Beginners, my book with David Pressman (Nolo).
Another crazy patent bites the dust. It’s clear that small companies simply do not have the time, resources and money to check if their software infringes upon registered patents. Apparently, large companies such as Microsoft don’t bother as well. The whole computer industry seems to be in a state of “better to ask forgiveness than permission” when it comes to software patents.
http://www.devtopics.com/are-software-patent-self-exams-realistic/