By Rachel Chalmers
A federal district court judge has granted Amazon.com Inc a preliminary injunction preventing rivals from infringing its patent on 1-Click online purchases. To the alarm of many who oppose patents on what seem to be basic software processes, US District Court Judge Marsha J Pechman’s decision will prevent Amazon rival barnesandnoble.com from using what Amazon says is copycat technology – at least until the lawsuit is resolved.
On October 20, 1999, Amazon sued its competitor for patent infringement, claiming that barnesandnoble.com: meticulously copied Amazon.com’s 1-Click process, dubbed it ‘Express Lane’ and introduced it to their barnesandnoble.com web site. Critics say it’s not fair that Amazon should be able to patent such a seemingly obvious feature as one-click shopping, but the company says they’re wrong. The patent system is designed to encourage innovation, argued Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. Amazon.com spent thousands of hours developing the 1-Click shopping feature. We’ve always worked hard to be innovators.
The decision is far from final. Judge Pechman’s injunction simply means she feels Amazon’s case may have some merit, and that barnesandnoble.com should be preventing from inflicting any further harm on its rival. Barnesandnoble.com says it still believes it can win the case. Although we are disappointed with the judge’s preliminary injunction, we believe our position regarding our order process technology will be upheld upon appeal, executives said in a statement. They added that the new Express Checkout feature, designed to replace Express Lane will now be launched ahead of time.
Nevertheless, we do not intend to sit back and allow Amazon to stake a claim upon any technology that is widely used, the statement continued. Allowing them to do so abridges our rights as a leader in e-commerce, but more importantly limits the choices of consumers… The judge’s decision will not affect our performance or our ability to serve customers one iota, and this will be demonstrated when Express Checkout launches in the next several days.
