New Zealander Peter Calveley is pursuing a
reexamination of the 1-Click patent granted to Amazon. The US
Patent and Trade marks Office (USPTO) last year agreed to conduct a
reexamination and the process is ongoing.
Calveley has no business interest in the
revocation of the patent, he is just an online shopper who believes
that Amazon should not have been awarded the patent.
"According to the Code of Federal Regulations
Amazon.com are supposed to give me a copy of everything they
file-but they have made a habit of not doing so," said Calveley on
his blog. "I had to call the USPTO and persuade them to remind
Amazon of the rules so finally Amazon mailed me a copy of the
documents."
Amongst the material were documents
underlining the commercial effectiveness of the one-click shopping
method. "Amazon have also filed a number of documents attesting to
the commercial effectiveness and advantages of 'One click
shopping'," wrote Calveley. "Perhaps they are intending to make
some of the old arguments along the lines of: 'Nobody thought it
would be successful – but it was – so it must be non-obvious!' and
'Look how commercially successful it is – it must be non-obvious!'
etc."
"I thought they might try some of these
tactics, so in my request for re-examination, I have already
pointed out that there were a lot of other reasons Amazon had
commercial success – its customization features (for which Pinpoint
Incorporated unsuccessfully sued Amazon for patent infringement),
the number of books in stock, the general growth of the Internet
and e-commerce etc."
Calveley also discovered that Amazon had
included in its submissions definitions backing its arguments that
were not only gathered years after the relevant period, but from an
unreliable source, collaborative encyclopaedia Wikipedia.
"Other [documents] include a definition of
'client-server' taken from Wikipedia in 2006, and a definition of
'shopping cart' taken from Wikipedia in 2004," he wrote. "One would
hope that these would not be taken as representative of how things
were thought of when the patent was filed 10 years ago."
"Even leaving aside general questions about
the
reliability of information on Wikipedia, and the fact that the
references don’t date from the time period they would presumably be
applied to, one hopes that the examiner will take time to think
about the deeper implications of giving any weight at all to
evidence on a website ANYONE CAN EDIT," he wrote.
Calveley's argument is that the 1-Click patent
is not valid because other companies had got there first. "The
DigiCash system (which had a "one-click purchasing" feature) not
only achieved commercial success, but also was noted for its
convenience and the fact that it enabled “impulse” purchases by
consumers," said Calveley. "Furthermore, it prompted a similar
system to appear soon afterwards, the 'Cybercoin' system promoted
by Cybercash."
Amazon's patent filing dates from 1997, and
Calveley says that he has evidence from the press that the DigiCash
and other systems were up and running before that. If 'prior art' –
technology or inventions performing the function of a patent before
the registration of that patent – is found then a patent becomes
invalid.
Calveley is not acting for any corporation and
had to raise the cost of a patent re-examination himself. There is
a $2,520 fee which he raised from donations from people who found
out about his campaign online.
Last May the USPTO decided to grant the
re-examination, and that process is ongoing. He has previously told
OUT-LAW that his actions are for his own interest. "I wasn't
frothing at the mouth to destroy them," he said. "I was mildly
peeved. I have no ideological axe to grind; I just thought, 'this
is interesting; I can have some fun here. They deserve to be
smacked down."
