Amazon one-click patent claim thrown out of court

Amazon has lost out in its attempt to stop Barnes and Noble using its one-click buying process.

Amazon was awarded an injunction against its rival in December 1999 when a judge agreed that it had the right to block anyone else using such a process on their website. Amazon has since come in for serious criticism for trying to patent such a commonplace business process. The case was not about the technology itself, just the one-click buying process - Barnes and Noble did not copy the code used by Amazon. The US Court of Appeals has now overturned the original injunction. Barnes and Noble intends to take the case all the way to the trials court.