The online retailer Amazon.com obtained Patent #5,960,411 for its 1-Click online ordering system in September 1999. The patent is directed towards a method of placing a purchase order online, wherein the customer enters account information once so that subsequent purchases on the website may be made by a single click on a button. Amazon subsequently licensed the patent to Apple and sued competing bookseller Barnes and Noble to keep them from using a similar purchasing method on their own site. However, in 2006, ex parte reexamination proceedings commenced, and the USPTO rejected all but five of Amazon's claims.
In 2007, Amazon made amendments to the claims of the patent that limited the claim scope to a "shopping cart model." The claim limitations overcame the prior art references according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and four years after reexamination began, the USPTO issued a notice of intent to issue a reexamination certificate for the '411 patent. Yet, as some consider the patent to still be overly broad and the shopping cart limitation to be trivial, the confirmation of Amazon's patent may serve as a catalyst for reform to post-grant opposition procedures.
