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E-commerce will evolve next month as Amazon loses the 1-Click patent

thirtybees.com

101–110 of 237 posts

Re: E-commerce will evolve next month as Amazon loses the 1-Click patent

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, years of research and brilliant ideas should be protected. However one click shopping is a bit obvious.

Not to sound condescending but the following phrase "years of research and brilliant ideas should be protected" can never adequately define what must be patented and what must not be. An brilliant idea need not take years of research. Even the interpretation of the word brilliant is debatable. PS: I'm not taking any stance with respect to patents. Just saying that it's not black and white.

Agreed, no issue I know of is black and white. I think the grammar is correct though, or should I have said "years of research OR brilliant ideas"? Would you have preferred "insightful ideas"

Re: E-commerce will evolve next month as Amazon loses the 1-Click patent

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used the Payment Request API in a project and it was great. Chrome currently has it implemented for Android, you call a JavaScript function, a prompt appears asking the user if they'd like to pay, they enter the security code and hit pay. All this feature actually does it give you the users credit card, phone number, and billing/shipping addresses. You still have to give that information to someone like Stripe. The…

Do you know if this is being used in iOS Safari for Touch ID in the browser too? Or is that something non-standard?

Apple Pay on the web exists and it's fantastic. As Tarek points out it is custom and doesn't use this standard.

Apple has not implemented the starndard yet, the WebKit Status page lists it as "Under Consideration".

I hope they end up implementing it for the sites hat won't do Apple Pay natively.

Re: E-commerce will evolve next month as Amazon loses the 1-Click patent

#103
post #31
post #6

I ran an ecommerce company for about a year, and one click checkout was the least of our concerns when it came to Amazon. The speed of delivery, prime benefits, brand recognition, and willingness to lose money on many if not most items are absolutely brutal to compete against. I'm glad one click checkout will be more broadly available, but it's probably not going to make much of a difference...

Absolutely. They have the capital and the scale to outcompete you and anyone that tries to go against them. Bar regulations to protect competition, you have no chance.

I've heard this, but I honestly don't see it in practice.

If you've been to a Costco recently you may be surprised to find that they're much less expensive than Amazon. They have more buying power and stronger vendor relationships that AMZN simply doesn't have. Prime Day 2017 was also a huge disappointment (Mostly overpriced junk like bluetooth speakers).

Honestly I think the only thing that works in Amazon's favor is the convenience, and their private distribution/delivery network. Beyond that they're nothing more than a generic online marketplace.

Re: E-commerce will evolve next month as Amazon loses the 1-Click patent

#104
post #57
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people don't realize (or maybe care?) that Amazon makes up a fair amount of that loss from screwing over distributors and third party sellers. The Walmart of the Internet, I suppose. FWIW I usually try to find more direct sources before buying on Amazon. If the other source can drop a few bucks off the Amazon price and offer free shipping I'll buy it direct from them.

Free shipping for what delivery time frame? Amazon Prime's fees are quite small compared to direct shipping costs with carriers. It depends on the product type, of course, but typically third-party sellers are already on thin margins selling on Amazon. It's very likely that "drop a few bucks off the Amazon price and offer free shipping" means they're selling to you at a loss.

thin profit margins on amazon is not the same as costs of doing business on amazon. Amazon takes a hefty cut.

Re: E-commerce will evolve next month as Amazon loses the 1-Click patent

#105
post #30

Setting aside the madness that is the patent itself ever being granted, what I found most interesting on that post was that this could now (possibly) become an actual web standard in the future: > the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has started writing a draft proposal for one click buying methods. The W3C site itself has a number of web payment related proposals in progress[1]. The Payment Request API, in particular…

I found > the patent will expire and the technology behind it will be free to be used by any e-commerce site particularly specious. There is no "technology" behind it. It was a concept or busines process that the vaguaries of patent law deemed worthy of rewarding. Not to mention that any technology ("source code") Amazon used to implement the patent will remain under copyright essentially indefinitely.

Are you just quibbling about the semantics used in the article?

Or are you saying nobody else can implement "1 click" even after the patent expires... because of copyright?

Edit: Was an honest question, I've upvoted all the answers as I found them interesting, not understanding the barrage of downvotes shrug

Re: E-commerce will evolve next month as Amazon loses the 1-Click patent

#106
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used the Payment Request API in a project and it was great. Chrome currently has it implemented for Android, you call a JavaScript function, a prompt appears asking the user if they'd like to pay, they enter the security code and hit pay. All this feature actually does it give you the users credit card, phone number, and billing/shipping addresses. You still have to give that information to someone like Stripe. The…

Well, they are trying to undercut Chinese with web payments, one part why mobile payments took off so well in China is because Tencent and Alibaba took out browser makers out of the equation. If you open a website that requests your Visa or MasterCard CC data in any Tencent product, it will be blocked unless "their special hack proof API" is used. And yes, they blocked apple pay too

> Well, they are trying to undercut Chinese with web payments

Alibaba are very active participants on the Payment Request Working Group. I'm not sure they can undercut themselves. You will find several very large Chinese companies taking part: https://www.w3.org/2004/01/pp-impl/83744/status

Re: E-commerce will evolve next month as Amazon loses the 1-Click patent

#107
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found > the patent will expire and the technology behind it will be free to be used by any e-commerce site particularly specious. There is no "technology" behind it. It was a concept or busines process that the vaguaries of patent law deemed worthy of rewarding. Not to mention that any technology ("source code") Amazon used to implement the patent will remain under copyright essentially indefinitely.

Are you just quibbling about the semantics used in the article? Or are you saying nobody else can implement "1 click" even after the patent expires... because of copyright? Edit: Was an honest question, I've upvoted all the answers as I found them interesting, not understanding the barrage of downvotes shrug

They're saying that, unlike usual patents, the content of the one-click patent filing does not serve as a useful basis for anyone else's implementation of a one-click shopping cart. This is the whole point of patents: to publicize a trade-secret process in exchange for protection. If your patent can't be used by your competitors to (make it easier to) start doing the thing you're doing, then you didn't really file a patent.

The one-click patent has an implementation, but the implementation is so trivial that there are only two things you can do with it: either copy it wholesale, or write your own based on the same idea (which will have nothing in common with the original because they're both too small to "share DNA" like that.) In this case, you can't copy wholesale, because copyright. So you're stuck writing from scratch. At that point, the patent has given you no advantage in implementation over the simple knowledge that a process for doing X exists at all.

Re: E-commerce will evolve next month as Amazon loses the 1-Click patent

#108
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found > the patent will expire and the technology behind it will be free to be used by any e-commerce site particularly specious. There is no "technology" behind it. It was a concept or busines process that the vaguaries of patent law deemed worthy of rewarding. Not to mention that any technology ("source code") Amazon used to implement the patent will remain under copyright essentially indefinitely.

Are you just quibbling about the semantics used in the article? Or are you saying nobody else can implement "1 click" even after the patent expires... because of copyright? Edit: Was an honest question, I've upvoted all the answers as I found them interesting, not understanding the barrage of downvotes shrug

I don't think it's a quibble. I think it's a point about what even makes sense to be patentable. The expiration of the patent frees up exactly zero technology.

Re: E-commerce will evolve next month as Amazon loses the 1-Click patent

#109
This is almost like a patent on cars that go above 60 MPH. Or a website that takes less than 50 ms to load.

They have a patent on the RESULT of technology. The patent SHOULD be on THEIR VERY SPECIFIC IMPLEMENTATION of 1-click checkout, but instead it is on all implementations that result in 1-click checkout.

Patents really are not meant for the internet...

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