Finally, Amazon's monopoly on one-click checkout is over

[Eskil]

Today marks the 20th year anniversary (and thus expiration date) of Amazon's monopoly on "one click checkout". For those who didn't know... in 1997, Amazon applied for, and was actually granted(!) to much controversy, a patent on one-click checkouts in e-commerce transactions - meaning that any other website that wanted to do the same either couldn't, or would have to license the patent from Amazon (which Apple ended up doing among a few others).

Up until now, this has been the reason why no big shopping cart software like Shopify, BigCommerce, and others, or their 3rd party plugins for that matter, could offer this convenience. You were forced to give customers a few more steps or pages to go through.

But, not anymore Today, the 20 year old patent expired, so expect to see the change coming soon to a lot of ecommerce sites. And last but not least - for entrepreneurs like us - it means we can soon begin offering this to our customers as well.

Amazon ‘1-Click’ patent expires today, get ready for faster web-wide checkout

Amazon '1-Click' patent expires today, get ready for faster web-wide checkout

 

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[BD64]

How the hell did they manage to get exclusive rights to one-click checkout? Always wondered why so many e-commerce sites didn't have this, I wonder how fast everyone will adopt it.

 

[Merging Left]

Good opportunity for a programmer to develop some Wordpress and Shopify plugins for one-click checkout... just sayin'...

 

[Eskil]

How the hell did they manage to get exclusive rights to one-click checkout?

It was the wild west of the internet days, and most people, including the US patent office didn't fully understand internet technology, online shopping carts, etc. Many patent lawyers have since said that if that patent was applied for today, it would never have been approved.

 

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