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Comment by ghshephard | Hacker News Reader

It worked out well for both of them. I recall, at the time, when Apple did the deal for $1mm, that it provided a lot of validity to Amazon that their patent was for real, and any vendor that was directly competitive with Amazon would likely think, at least a little bit longer, before directly ignoring Amazon's patent on "one-click" purchasing.

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This article does not in any way provide us with enough information to conclude whether it was a good licensing deal for either party. It just tells a romanticized Steve Jobs business story.

We don't know if this license helped Apple sell so many products that it paid back the investment.

For Amazon it obviously worked out on two fronts, since they also got paid 1M. Unless you mean that this has to be weighed against lost Apple product sales on Amazon? Were Apple products even for sale on Amazon at the time?

He is "recalling" from other information at the time. I don't think most apple products were for sale on Amazon at that time, but that's not really what he's talking about.

He's referencing that other ecommerce sites (e.g. walmart) couldn't just say "oh, one click buying is a good idea, and an obvious one, so we'll implement it too". By having Apple pay significant money for right to use the patent, it adds validation that it isn't a frivolous patent, and actually a useful, non-trivial, non-obvious solution which warrents being licenced.

It gave Amazon much better ground to file patent infringement against any competitor that attempted a 1 click checkout solution without licensing the patent, both improving chance of further licensing and reducing the chance competing ecommerce platforms would implement the feature without licensing it through Amazon.

Exactly correct (and much better put than I did). I remember, vividly when the "one-click" patent came out, and honestly, it seemed completely ludicrous. All of the people I knew in the valley at the time openly mocked it. It was exactly the sort of thing that any intelligent designer would have come up with, given the presence of cookies (which were at least a bit innovative, but Netscape had provided a royalty-free license to the patent). "One-Click" purchasing is precisely the idiocy that we think of, when we think of Patent abuse.

So, when Apple actually paid money to Amazon, what occurred to me at the time, was that Apple had in a single stroke both added some legitimacy to the Patent, and probably got a discount on the deal because they were the initial customer. It's unclear whether the one-click behavior on IOS made use of any the processes described in the 1-click patent, but, at the very least, it didn't hurt that Apple had it in their back pocket.

All in all I think it was a win-win scenario for both parties.

It's a simple story of mafioso power collusion. Amazon wanted to use bully power, but wasn't strong enough on its own, so Amazon recruited Apple to join. Amazon gets to rob the marketplace, and Apple gets "protection" and and an advantage against the mutual competitors Amazon attacks.

>>This article does not in any way provide us with enough information to conclude whether it was a good licensing deal for either party. It just tells a romanticized Steve Jobs business story.

I suspect a lot of deals are done this way. Joe talks to Kevin and legal sets it up. Done in a heartbeat, just in case. Whether it worked out or not...who knows but Apple went full speed ahead selling and didn't end up in court battles. (yeah, they might have won but it's just $1 mil)

Us old timers remember what was happening at the time. It turns out it was an incredible deal for both sides.

The 1-click patent didn't have a great deal of credibility at the time. Many people in the tech industry were railing against Amazon and 1-click. It seemed like such a stupid patent and I think a lot of people didn't expect it to hold up.

Apple launched the iTunes store with $0.99 mp3's during the same period and the whole thing hinged on 1-click shopping. You could click a button to preview and there was one right next to it that would buy the song. No confirmation screens or checkout process. Downloaded and added to your library. It was so easy and people were spending a fortune on there because there was nothing else like it. Keep in mind this is one the heels of the decline of Napster and other mainstream P2P apps. People were being ratted out by their ISPs, sued and settling for $3000 for downloading some crummy song. Here you could do it legally and inexpensively and with a great UX because of 1-click. And for the first time you could buy a single song instead of an entire album. Prior to that, we had "singles" that contained a radio song from the album and a couple b-sides for like $5-8.

Apple had to launch iTunes with 1-click for it to be successful. The $1M license fee cost far less than the inevitable lawsuit would have. They made a fortune with iTunes and used it to enter new product categories. You could argue that that was one of the pivotal moments that transformed the company into what it is today. That licensing fee was highway robbery.

You also have Amazon who, at the time, had an outstanding selection, the best prices, fast handling times, reliable shipping and the most friction free buying process anywhere. Many retail sites didn't even have user accounts back then. You would enter your info with each order. The ones that did have accounts still made you click through several screens to place an order.

Amazon's end of the deal is they got paid $1M to not have to sue anyone (and possible lose) and have their ridiculous patent become credible overnight. The result was they maintained their superior online shopping experience by preventing others from mimicking it and leveraged it to become the beast they are today.

It seemed like such a stupid patent because it was a stupid patent. These are exactly the kinds of patents that represent what's wrong with our patent system.

Was just thinking, if the click takes you to a page with a countdown timer and a big cancel button, and the page then makes the purchase at the end of the countdown, with the timer length being part of the user account settings, as long as the timer is not zero, that is not presumably a one click purchase, under the terms of the one click patent, as it is not a single action by the customer that purchases the product.

Also, it would be nice anyway to have an adjustable brief cooling off timer on an order, so is a nice implementation idea regardless of the one click patent.

I have no idea. In any case, Jobs never would have allowed it. The iTunes Store has the optimal purchasing process that happened to be covered by Amazon’s patent. They took the cheap way out. That same UX morphed into the AppStore after the iPhone. Then it made its way into the Apple TV.

Everyone has it now. I wonder if they got as good a deal as Apple did. We all expected someone big to fight that patent. Apple basically said “f- this” and took the easy way out even if it meant everyone else would get screwed. One of the few times Apple had first mover advantage.

Jobs wouldn't have allowed it because it is something that would at first glance reduce purchases, as it allows people to back out immediately if they click buy.

As far as design patterns for purchasing go, I would say it is probably more optimal than a simple one-click, if optimising for both the buyer and seller's interests. One-click is more optimal if you are only optimising for the seller.

> Also, it would be nice anyway to have an adjustable brief cooling off timer on an order, so is a nice implementation idea regardless of the one click patent.

As a rule of thumb, people trying to sell you a thing are unlikely to give you extra time past the "I need to buy this" impulse to decide not to buy it.

>people trying to sell you a thing are unlikely to give you extra time past the "I need to buy this" impulse to decide not to buy it

In the EU, the consumer has the right to cancel any order or return any purchase, for any reason, within 14 days.

So in the EU, you already have that extra time in law.

Given that, from a retailers perspective, having a timer could actually make commercial sense, as the cost from lost sales could be balanced out by a reduction in cancelled orders and returns.

It may make commercial sense anyway, out of customers liking the feature and that translating into goodwill over time, but that would be much harder to put a figure on.

I really do wonder what the cost/benefit numbers are for a company putting more friction on their return/refund process while adding to the processing cost.

I'm sure I've made plenty of purchases where a big ticking "Are you sure you wanted to do that, Dave?" undo button might have worked but it wasn't worth it for me to go through the effort to return or refund.

It's the strategy Microsoft employed with android OEMs too, except Microsoft actually paid them and/or gave them a deal in which the first OEMs to accept the licensing came out on top. Once that was done it was much easier for Microsoft to convince the rest of the OEMs to pay up for the licensing.

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