1-Click

Patent

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued a patent for this technique to Amazon.com in September 1999. Amazon.com also owns the "1-Click" trademark.

On May 12, 2006, the USPTO ordered a reexamination of the "One-Click" patent, based on a request filed by Peter Calveley. Calveley cited as prior art an earlier e-commerce patent and the Digicash electronic cash system.

On October 9, 2007, the USPTO issued an office action in the reexamination which confirmed the patentability of claims 6 to 10 of the patent. The patent examiner, however, rejected claims 1 to 5 and 11 to 26. In November 2007, Amazon responded by amending the broadest claims (1 and 11) to restrict them to a shopping cart model of commerce. They have also submitted several hundred references for the examiner to consider. In March 2010, the reexamined and amended patent was allowed.

Amazon's U.S. patent expired on September 11, 2017.

In Europe, a patent application on 1-Click ordering was filed with the European Patent Office (EPO) but was rejected by the EPO in 2007 due to obviousness; the decision was upheld in 2011.

A related gift-ordering patent was granted in 2003, but revoked in 2007 following an opposition.

In Canada, the Federal Court of Canada in Amazon.com Inc v Canada (Commissioner of Patents) held that the One click patent could not be rejected as a pure business method since it had a physical effect. The Court remanded the application to the Canadian patent office for a reexamination.