Apparently Amazon is facing yet another suit over patent infringement involving its website technologies. “The complaint accuses Amazon of using technology on its own Web site and for third parties such as Target.com that infringes on two Registrar Systems patents, Amazon said.” (“Amazon named in patent infringement suit”, Puget Sound Business Journal, Feb 17).
Though I am generally sympathetic to companies sued over software patents, particularly since the US Patent Office seems to have completely lost its mind in granting many of these patents, I have little sympathy for Amazon. After all, they were the ones to patent and then sue their rivals over “one-click” ordering.
My college roommate, who was a trade lawyer for quite a while, told me a story of a company trying to get their disposable cigarette lighter to pass the US child safety tests (I promise we will get back on topic in a second). I can’t remember the exact test, but it involved giving a bunch of children the lighter and observing how many in a certain amount of time could figure out how to defeat the childproofing. Apparently a key to success was to (literally) go out and find the slowest and dullest group of kids you could. Which brings me back to the one-click patent, where surely Amazon must have gone through a similar process to find a patent examiner who would declare one-click ordering “non-obvious” and patentable.
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