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Setting aside the madness that is the patent itself ever being granted, what I found most interesting on that post was that this could now (possibly) become an

Setting aside the madness that is the patent itself ever being granted, what I found most interesting on that post was that this could now (possibly) become an actual web standard in the future: > the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has started writing a draft proposal for one click buying methods. The W3C site itself has a number of web payment related proposals in progress[1]. The Payment Request API, in particular, looks pretty interesting (updated 2017-08-17). I wonder what a difference something like that would've made back in the day when I was bathed in Paypal SOAP. [1] https://www.w3.org/TR/#tr_Web_Payments https://www.w3.org/TR/#tr_Web_Payments

ballenf 9y ago
I found > the patent will expire and the technology behind it will be free to be used by any e-commerce site particularly specious. There is no "technology" behind it. It was a concept or busines process that the vaguaries of patent law deemed worthy of rewarding. Not to mention that any technology ("source code") Amazon used to implement the patent will remain under copyright essentially indefinitely.
- tenkeyless 9y ago
  this is nonsense
  - tokenizerrr 9y ago
    Explain?
- nsxwolf 9y ago
  Are you just quibbling about the semantics used in the article? Or are you saying nobody else can implement "1 click" even after the patent expires... because of copyright? Edit: Was an honest question, I've upvoted all the answers as I found them interesting, not understanding the barrage of downvotes shrug
  - derefr 9y ago
    They're saying that, unlike usual patents, the content of the one-click patent filing does not serve as a useful basis for anyone else's implementation of a one-click shopping cart. This is the whole point of patents: to publicize a trade-secret process in exchange for protection. If your patent can't be used by your competitors to (make it easier to) start doing the thing you're doing, then you didn't really file a patent. The one-click patent has an implementation, but the implementation is so trivial that there are only two things you can do with it: either copy it wholesale, or write your own based on the same idea (which will have nothing in common with the original because they're both too small to "share DNA" like that.) In this case, you can't copy wholesale, because copyright. So you're stuck writing from scratch. At that point, the patent has given you no advantage in implementation over the simple knowledge that a process for doing X exists at all.
    - mcphage 9y ago
      > If your patent can't be used by your competitors to (make it easier to) start doing the thing you're doing, then you didn't really file a patent. This is a good way of describing the point of patents, thanks :-)
    - hathawsh 9y ago
      This is the most insightful description of patents I've ever seen. Thank you.
    - CamperBob2 9y ago
      Exactly. If the teachings in the patent aren't necessary or even useful to future developers, then what was the point of granting a 20-year monopoly in the first place? No research expenses needed to be recouped, and there was never any danger that some arcane knowledge would be locked away forever as a trade secret. Many patents don't reward the first person who solves a given problem, so much as they reward the first person to encounter a given problem. That person adopts a trivial, obvious solution and the USPTO cheerfully rubber-stamps it at everyone else's expense. This was clearly one of those patents. It cost Amazon essentially nothing to research, nothing to develop, and nothing to implement, but the rewards were immense.
- abpavel 9y ago
  Business process can be considered a technology, i.e. technical procedure. Also, since they got the patent, wouldn't they have to pass tests for previous works, novelty, and obviousness? And, why shouldn't something be patentable, just because it's easy to replicate?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - pc2g4d 9y ago
    Being easy to replicate often suggests that it is, in fact, _obvious_. Which is supposed to invalidate the patent.
    - delazeur 9y ago
      Lots of things become easy to replicate after they've been done once, despite being non-obvious before. The "no obvious inventions" part of patent law is supposed to prevent people from patenting things that are already broadly used (or small variations on things that are already broadly used). The cliched example being that you can't patent the wheel. Edit: I see that Animats has covered this much better elsewhere in the thread.
      - rixed 9y ago
        > Lots of things become easy to replicate after they've been done once, despite being non-obvious before Maybe, but this is not why we have patents. Patents justification is to help innovations to spread, by making them public and, in exchange, granting a monopoly for some time as would have been the case should the innovation been kept secret. Patents are not, in theory, a bonus for whoever implement something first. In practice though, this seems to be largely the case, at least in software, that patents are like those mine field maps during the gold rushes, partitioning the hills and delimiting every tiny area belonging to one miner, probably to police what would otherwise be a violent, perpetual quarrel.
        9y ago
octalmage 9y ago
I used the Payment Request API in a project and it was great. Chrome currently has it implemented for Android, you call a JavaScript function, a prompt appears asking the user if they'd like to pay, they enter the security code and hit pay. All this feature actually does it give you the users credit card, phone number, and billing/shipping addresses. You still have to give that information to someone like Stripe. They're focusing on mobile since that is where the checkout experience is the most painful. https://ride.lyft.com https://ride.lyft.com has it implemented if you want to check it out.
- baybal2 9y ago
  Well, they are trying to undercut Chinese with web payments, one part why mobile payments took off so well in China is because Tencent and Alibaba took out browser makers out of the equation. If you open a website that requests your Visa or MasterCard CC data in any Tencent product, it will be blocked unless "their special hack proof API" is used. And yes, they blocked apple pay too
  - objclxt 9y ago
    > Well, they are trying to undercut Chinese with web payments Alibaba are very active participants on the Payment Request Working Group. I'm not sure they can undercut themselves. You will find several very large Chinese companies taking part: https://www.w3.org/2004/01/pp-impl/83744/status https://www.w3.org/2004/01/pp-impl/83744/status
    - baybal2 9y ago
      On my memory, they were very very anxious about anything with capacity to subplant zhifubao. Paypal famously had a one click payment plugin for China, and it got banned by Alibaba nearly instantaneously. Paypal later banned Alibaba from using Paypal outside of China
- mcintyre1994 9y ago
  Do you know if this is being used in iOS Safari for Touch ID in the browser too? Or is that something non-standard?
unkown-unknowns 9y ago
Eons past, the HTTP status code 402 was reserved for future use; "Payment Required". Please to god W3C, take 402 and make it part of that standard! I so wish for us all to be able to respond 402 and have a simple standard way to charge.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- objclxt 9y ago
  Payment Request is a JS / client-side API (it's all about getting payment information from the browser to the website), so HTTP codes don't really come into it. However, there's a proposed server/HTTP specification that does include it. It lacks the same broad support that Payment Request has, so is still in quite an early stage of development - https://www.w3.org/TR/webpayments-http-api/ https://www.w3.org/TR/webpayments-http-api/
- captn3m0 9y ago
  This is what GNU Taler [0] does. You can send additional headers[1] to decide how the payment will be processed, such as X-Taler-Contract-Url and X-Taler-Offer-Url [1]: https://docs.taler.net/merchant/frontend/python/html/tutorial.html#Headers-for-HTTP-402 https://docs.taler.net/merchant/frontend/python/html/tutoria... [0]: https://taler.net/en/index.html https://taler.net/en/index.html
abpavel 9y ago
> madness Why shouldn't something be patentable, just because it's easy to replicate?
- nocman 9y ago
  Because if an "invention" is obvious it isn't patentable ( http://www.bitlaw.com/source/35usc/103.html http://www.bitlaw.com/source/35usc/103.html ), and many many people see this as being far too obvious to be patentable.
  - jimm 9y ago
    Additionally, the meaning of "obvious" is non-obvious. It means obvious to somebody with knowledge of the relevant field.
    - nocman 9y ago
      Which, in my estimation, makes this "invention" even MORE obvious.
  - Animats 9y ago
    "Obvious" for patentability purposes means obvious in advance, not obvious in hindsight. Before Amazon, nobody had one-click purchasing. They wanted people to sign up, to fill out forms with irrelevant info, and "engage with the customer". After Amazon, many people wanted one-click. That means it wasn't "obvious to one skilled in the art" in advance. For patentability purposes, the best way to demonstrate non-obviousness is to show that lots of people have worked on the problem and didn't get it right. The one-click patent meets that test. Amazon's real innovation was combining one-click ordering with easy order cancellation for a few minutes after the order. This makes enabling one-click ordering low-risk. Many on-line sales operations still don't get this, as I mentioned the last time this came up on HN. Most shopping cart programs have a built-in attitude of "We have your money now, muhaaa haaa". Yes, you can "contact customer service to cancel." ("Please listen carefully as our menu options have changed... Due to unusually high call volume...") Now the people who don't get this will implement one-click ordering without easy cancellation and anger their customers.

ballenf 9y ago

I found > the patent will expire and the technology behind it will be free to be used by any e-commerce site particularly specious. There is no "technology" behind it. It was a concept or busines process that the vaguaries of patent law deemed worthy of rewarding. Not to mention that any technology ("source code") Amazon used to implement the patent will remain under copyright essentially indefinitely.

tenkeyless 9y ago
this is nonsense
- tokenizerrr 9y ago
  Explain?
nsxwolf 9y ago
Are you just quibbling about the semantics used in the article? Or are you saying nobody else can implement "1 click" even after the patent expires... because of copyright? Edit: Was an honest question, I've upvoted all the answers as I found them interesting, not understanding the barrage of downvotes shrug
- derefr 9y ago
  They're saying that, unlike usual patents, the content of the one-click patent filing does not serve as a useful basis for anyone else's implementation of a one-click shopping cart. This is the whole point of patents: to publicize a trade-secret process in exchange for protection. If your patent can't be used by your competitors to (make it easier to) start doing the thing you're doing, then you didn't really file a patent. The one-click patent has an implementation, but the implementation is so trivial that there are only two things you can do with it: either copy it wholesale, or write your own based on the same idea (which will have nothing in common with the original because they're both too small to "share DNA" like that.) In this case, you can't copy wholesale, because copyright. So you're stuck writing from scratch. At that point, the patent has given you no advantage in implementation over the simple knowledge that a process for doing X exists at all.
  - mcphage 9y ago
    > If your patent can't be used by your competitors to (make it easier to) start doing the thing you're doing, then you didn't really file a patent. This is a good way of describing the point of patents, thanks :-)
  - hathawsh 9y ago
    This is the most insightful description of patents I've ever seen. Thank you.
  - CamperBob2 9y ago
    Exactly. If the teachings in the patent aren't necessary or even useful to future developers, then what was the point of granting a 20-year monopoly in the first place? No research expenses needed to be recouped, and there was never any danger that some arcane knowledge would be locked away forever as a trade secret. Many patents don't reward the first person who solves a given problem, so much as they reward the first person to encounter a given problem. That person adopts a trivial, obvious solution and the USPTO cheerfully rubber-stamps it at everyone else's expense. This was clearly one of those patents. It cost Amazon essentially nothing to research, nothing to develop, and nothing to implement, but the rewards were immense.
abpavel 9y ago
Business process can be considered a technology, i.e. technical procedure. Also, since they got the patent, wouldn't they have to pass tests for previous works, novelty, and obviousness? And, why shouldn't something be patentable, just because it's easy to replicate?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- pc2g4d 9y ago
  Being easy to replicate often suggests that it is, in fact, _obvious_. Which is supposed to invalidate the patent.
  - delazeur 9y ago
    Lots of things become easy to replicate after they've been done once, despite being non-obvious before. The "no obvious inventions" part of patent law is supposed to prevent people from patenting things that are already broadly used (or small variations on things that are already broadly used). The cliched example being that you can't patent the wheel. Edit: I see that Animats has covered this much better elsewhere in the thread.
    - rixed 9y ago
      > Lots of things become easy to replicate after they've been done once, despite being non-obvious before Maybe, but this is not why we have patents. Patents justification is to help innovations to spread, by making them public and, in exchange, granting a monopoly for some time as would have been the case should the innovation been kept secret. Patents are not, in theory, a bonus for whoever implement something first. In practice though, this seems to be largely the case, at least in software, that patents are like those mine field maps during the gold rushes, partitioning the hills and delimiting every tiny area belonging to one miner, probably to police what would otherwise be a violent, perpetual quarrel.
      - 9y ago

octalmage 9y ago

I used the Payment Request API in a project and it was great. Chrome currently has it implemented for Android, you call a JavaScript function, a prompt appears asking the user if they'd like to pay, they enter the security code and hit pay. All this feature actually does it give you the users credit card, phone number, and billing/shipping addresses. You still have to give that information to someone like Stripe. They're focusing on mobile since that is where the checkout experience is the most painful. https://ride.lyft.com https://ride.lyft.com has it implemented if you want to check it out.

baybal2 9y ago
Well, they are trying to undercut Chinese with web payments, one part why mobile payments took off so well in China is because Tencent and Alibaba took out browser makers out of the equation. If you open a website that requests your Visa or MasterCard CC data in any Tencent product, it will be blocked unless "their special hack proof API" is used. And yes, they blocked apple pay too
- objclxt 9y ago
  > Well, they are trying to undercut Chinese with web payments Alibaba are very active participants on the Payment Request Working Group. I'm not sure they can undercut themselves. You will find several very large Chinese companies taking part: https://www.w3.org/2004/01/pp-impl/83744/status https://www.w3.org/2004/01/pp-impl/83744/status
  - baybal2 9y ago
    On my memory, they were very very anxious about anything with capacity to subplant zhifubao. Paypal famously had a one click payment plugin for China, and it got banned by Alibaba nearly instantaneously. Paypal later banned Alibaba from using Paypal outside of China
mcintyre1994 9y ago
Do you know if this is being used in iOS Safari for Touch ID in the browser too? Or is that something non-standard?

unkown-unknowns 9y ago

Eons past, the HTTP status code 402 was reserved for future use; "Payment Required". Please to god W3C, take 402 and make it part of that standard! I so wish for us all to be able to respond 402 and have a simple standard way to charge.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
objclxt 9y ago
Payment Request is a JS / client-side API (it's all about getting payment information from the browser to the website), so HTTP codes don't really come into it. However, there's a proposed server/HTTP specification that does include it. It lacks the same broad support that Payment Request has, so is still in quite an early stage of development - https://www.w3.org/TR/webpayments-http-api/ https://www.w3.org/TR/webpayments-http-api/
captn3m0 9y ago
This is what GNU Taler [0] does. You can send additional headers[1] to decide how the payment will be processed, such as X-Taler-Contract-Url and X-Taler-Offer-Url [1]: https://docs.taler.net/merchant/frontend/python/html/tutorial.html#Headers-for-HTTP-402 https://docs.taler.net/merchant/frontend/python/html/tutoria... [0]: https://taler.net/en/index.html https://taler.net/en/index.html

abpavel 9y ago

> madness Why shouldn't something be patentable, just because it's easy to replicate?

nocman 9y ago
Because if an "invention" is obvious it isn't patentable ( http://www.bitlaw.com/source/35usc/103.html http://www.bitlaw.com/source/35usc/103.html ), and many many people see this as being far too obvious to be patentable.
- jimm 9y ago
  Additionally, the meaning of "obvious" is non-obvious. It means obvious to somebody with knowledge of the relevant field.
  - nocman 9y ago
    Which, in my estimation, makes this "invention" even MORE obvious.
- Animats 9y ago
  "Obvious" for patentability purposes means obvious in advance, not obvious in hindsight. Before Amazon, nobody had one-click purchasing. They wanted people to sign up, to fill out forms with irrelevant info, and "engage with the customer". After Amazon, many people wanted one-click. That means it wasn't "obvious to one skilled in the art" in advance. For patentability purposes, the best way to demonstrate non-obviousness is to show that lots of people have worked on the problem and didn't get it right. The one-click patent meets that test. Amazon's real innovation was combining one-click ordering with easy order cancellation for a few minutes after the order. This makes enabling one-click ordering low-risk. Many on-line sales operations still don't get this, as I mentioned the last time this came up on HN. Most shopping cart programs have a built-in attitude of "We have your money now, muhaaa haaa". Yes, you can "contact customer service to cancel." ("Please listen carefully as our menu options have changed... Due to unusually high call volume...") Now the people who don't get this will implement one-click ordering without easy cancellation and anger their customers.