[Patents] http://www.nowebpatents.org/

[Stefane Fermigier sf@fermigier.com]

http://www.nowebpatents.org/

``Amazon.com has received patents on so-called "one-click" buying systems and 
on
affiliate programs. These patents amount to the ability to impose a private,
Amazon.com E-Commerce Tax on all online commerce. It is impossible to run a
viable e-business if Amazon.com enforces these patents. No one-click shopping
means customer inconvenience. No affiliate programs means higher online prices
due to more costly marketing.

Amazon.com does not need patent protection to justify their investments in
their site.  It will cost their competitors just as much to implement these
features as it cost Amazon.com. That is why copyright and trademark 
protections
are sufficient.  Marketplaces pay a very high cost to grant patents -- patents
inhibit open markets and stifle competition. Patents should only be issued in
cases where someone can copy an innovation for a drastically lower cost than
the innovator's original investment.

In this case, the patents cover the general mechanism behind one-click 
shopping
and affiliate programs. However, any good programmer will tell you that the
general mechanism is easy to design. It's the actual implementation, the
programs themselves, that's difficult to produce. Amazon.com's implementation,
which accounts for the bulk of their investment in these technologies, is
already protected by copyright law, and doesn't need the addition of a
patent.''

-- 
Stéfane Fermigier, Tel: 06 63 04 12 77 (mobile).
<www.portalux.com>: le portail Linux / logiciel libre.