快猫短视频

INTERNET 眉bergeeks were beside themselves with anger last week after
Apple Computer licensed a controversial patent on 鈥渙ne-click shopping鈥� from
online book-seller Amazon.com. It鈥檚 one of the most heavily criticised Internet
patents ever granted
(快猫短视频, 8 April, p 14).

With one-click shopping, customers don鈥檛 have to enter their name and bank
details every time they buy something online. Instead, a small ID file called a
cookie, planted on their hard drive, allows them to be billed automatically.

Amazon鈥檚 patent was granted last September, and it sued online rival
Barnes&noble.com a month later to stop it using a similar system. In
December, a district court judge sided with Amazon鈥攂ut Barnes&noble is
appealing. 鈥淭his is an example of a patent that public policy should not permit
to be granted,鈥� says James Love, director of the Consumer Project on Technology,
a Washington DC pressure group. He thinks the action taken by Apple鈥攚hich
is now being run by Steve Jobs, one of its original founders鈥攃ould
dissuade other companies from challenging Amazon鈥檚 patent.

Critics complain that the idea shouldn鈥檛 be patentable as Amazon didn鈥檛
invent cookies. It simply came up with the idea of using them for billing.