One-Click Craziness
By Dale Dougherty
The Web has been a remarkably "open" platform, as defined by open standards and Open Source software. But there's a serious obstacle to the Web's ongoing openness. It's coming in the form of patents, such as the patent on one-click ordering awarded to Amazon (US5960411: Method and system for placing a purchase order via a communications network.) Once Amazon obtained the patent, it filed suit against its competitor, Barnes and Noble, which had implemented its version of one-click ordering. While the case is still being argued in court, the judge told Barnes and Noble to cease its use of one-click ordering. As a result Barnes and Noble customers must use a minimum of two clicks to order. Can half-click ordering—requiring only a mouse-over event—be far behind?
You might have read Tim O'Reilly's letter (posted on oreilly.com) to Jeff Bezos taking Amazon to task for its patent strategy. He says that Amazon is "pissing in the well." He argues that the opportunity for companies like Amazon has come about because people like Tim Berners-Lee created an open system based on "technologies that were freely given to the world." He adds, "If players like yourselves succeed in replacing that gift economy with a dog-eat-dog world in which everyone tries to keep their advances to themselves, and worse, tries to keep others from replicating them, you'll find yourself either spending a larger and larger part of your budget on developing your own technology, or, more likely, you'll soon find yourself hostage again to commercial software vendors whose interests may not be aligned with your own."
