BLOGGING, D-I-Y REEXAMINATION, AND THE ONE-CLICK PATENT - according to this site, an individual by the name of Peter Calveley from New Zealand (who admittedly does not have a legal background) has decided to file a reexamination request on Amazon.com's "one-click" patent and start a blog about it. He is also using the blog to seek donations to fund this effort, since he currently does not have the funds to pay the reexamination fee (the reexamination request states that "a check for $25.20 is enclosed. The balance of the $2,520 fee specified in 37 CFR 1.20(c) will be sent as soon as possible"). So far, $9.50 in donations have been received.

What's kind of funny about it is that, according to the blog, he filed the reexamination request as a form of vengeance for receiving a book late that he ordered from Amazon.com.

He is also requesting that anyone with knowledge of other prior art forward it to his attention.

It would be interesting to point out to him the prior art that Tim O'Reilly obtained during the BountyQuest days (and subsequently paid a $10k bounty on). According to this site, the winning art includes US Patent 4,734,858, which describes the use of a remote data terminal to place orders; US Patent 5,303,393, which describes a simplified way of placing an order via a two-way radio system; and European patent EP680185 (U.S. equivalent 5,819,034), which allegedly describes one-click shopping within the patent specification.

Informal opinions on this art concluded that the references were in the "close-but-no-cigar" category, in terms of invalidating the claims. However, they appear to have potential for at least narrowing some of the claims contained within the patent. As far as I know, the art was never actually asserted against the patent.