Here's more on the Amazon 1-click case, this time in succinct text form. It's from an op-ed in the Gazette.
Most patents cover specific gadgets, like a new broom or a better mousetrap. Patent holders get a 20-year right to prevent others from making a similar invention and profiting from it. Business-method patents are a special class of patents that grant ownership over technologies and the ways those technologies are put to use.
Business-method patents are troubling because they grant a monopoly not just over a particular technology but ultimately over ways of doing - over ways of interacting with technology. They allow patent holders to stake a claim in what is, in essence, human behaviour. (Apple, for example, has patents covering certain gestures for interacting with their touch-sensitive gizmos).
So next time you click once to buy, ask yourself whether the process is so unique and novel that Amazon should have a 20-year monopoly to it. The basic properties of the Internet (e.g. many-to-many communication, hyperlinks, etc.) opened up new ways for users and companies to interact. These qualities are just as responsible for new ways of doing business as any specific business method.
Read the rest at the Gazette
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