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. More particularly, it allows an

online shop Online shopping is a form of electronic commerce which allows consumers to directly buy goods or services from a seller over the Internet using a web browser or a mobile app. Consumers find a product of interest by visiting the website of the r ...

per using an Internet marketplace to purchase an item without having to use

shopping cart software Shopping cart software is a piece of e-commerce software on a web server that allows visitors to have an Internet site to select items for eventual purchase.Farris, Paul W.; Neil T. Bendle; Phillip E. Pfeifer; David J. Reibstein (2010). ''Marke ...

. 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 A payment card number, primary account number (PAN), or simply a card number, is the card identifier found on payment cards, such as credit cards and debit cards, as well as stored-value cards, gift cards and other similar cards. In some situati ...

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.

Patent

The

United States Patent and Trademark Office The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark registration authority for the United States. The USPTO's headquarters are in Alex ...

(USPTO) issued a patent 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 In United States patent law, a reexamination is a process whereby anyone—third party or inventor—can have a U.S. patent reexamined by a patent examiner to verify that the subject matter it claims is patentable. To have a patent reexamined, ...

of the "One-Click" patent, based on a request filed by Peter Calveley. Calveley cited as

prior art Prior art (also known as state of the art or background art) is a concept in patent law used to determine the patentability of an invention, in particular whether an invention meets the novelty and the inventive step or non-obviousness criteria ...

an earlier e-commerce patent and the Digicash electronic cash system. On October 9, 2007, the USPTO issued an

office action In the United States, an Office action is a document written by an examiner in a patent or trademark examination procedure and mailed to an applicant for a patent or trademark. The expression is used in many jurisdictions. Formally, the "O" is ...

in the reexamination which confirmed the patentability of claims 6 to 10 of the patent. The

patent examiner A patent examiner (or, historically, a patent clerk) is an employee, usually a civil servant with a scientific or engineering background, working at a patent office. Major employers of patent examiners are the European Patent Office (EPO), the U ...

, 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. In March 2010, the reexamined and amended patent was allowed. Amazon's U.S. patent expired on September 11, 2017. In Europe, a patent application on 1-Click ordering was filed with the

European Patent Office The European Patent Office (EPO) is one of the two organs of the European Patent Organisation (EPOrg), the other being the Administrative Council. The EPO acts as executive body for the organisation

(EPO) but was rejected by the EPO in 2007 due to obviousness; the decision was upheld in 2011. A related gift-ordering patent was granted in 2003, but revoked in 2007 following an

opposition Opposition may refer to: Arts and media * ''Opposition'' (Altars EP), 2011 EP by Christian metalcore band Altars * The Opposition (band), a London post-punk band * '' The Opposition with Jordan Klepper'', a late-night television series on Com ...

. 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.

Licensing

Apple Inc.

Amazon.com in 2000 licensed 1-Click ordering to Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) for use on its online store. Apple subsequently added 1-Click ordering to the

iTunes Store The iTunes Store is a digital media store operated by Apple Inc. It opened on April 28, 2003, as a result of Steve Jobs' push to open a digital marketplace for music. As of April 2020, iTunes offered 60 million songs, 2.2 million apps, 25,00 ...

and

iPhoto iPhoto is a discontinued digital photograph manipulation software application developed by Apple Inc. It was included with every Macintosh personal computer from 2002 to 2015, when it was replaced with Apple's Photos application. Originally so ...

. Apple paid $1 million to license the patent.

Barnes & Noble

Amazon filed a patent infringement lawsuit in October 1999 in response to

Barnes & Noble Barnes & Noble Booksellers is an American bookseller. It is a Fortune 1000 company and the bookseller with the largest number of retail outlets in the United States. As of July 7, 2020, the company operates 614 retail stores across all 50 ...

's offering a 1-Click ordering option called "Express Lane". After reviewing the evidence, a judge issued a

preliminary injunction An injunction is a legal and equitable remedy in the form of a special court order that compels a party to do or refrain from specific acts. ("The court of appeals ... has exclusive jurisdiction to enjoin, set aside, suspend (in whole or in p ...

ordering Barnes & Noble to stop offering Express Lane until the case was settled. Barnes & Noble had developed a way to design around the patent by requiring shoppers to make a second click to confirm their purchase. 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. In response to the lawsuit, the

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985, to support the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed under copyleft ( ...

urged a boycott of Amazon.com. The boycott was lifted by

GNU GNU () is an extensive collection of free software (383 packages as of January 2022), which can be used as an operating system or can be used in parts with other operating systems. The use of the completed GNU tools led to the family of operat ...

in September 2002.

Patent

Licensing

Apple Inc.

Barnes & Noble

References

See also