[peteforde]

Your anger is well-placed. As far as I've ever understood it, the patent was used to ensure a competitive advantage against its competitors during the era when Amazon was promoting itself as the world's biggest bookstore.

11 years out, Amazon is the world's biggest a-lot-of-things. IANAL but at some point this is just stifling innovation, pure and simple. 1-click was licensed to Apple 10 years ago, and this arrangement doesn't seem to have threatened Amazon's market situation.

The real goal of my post is the hope that the right people will see is, so that we can start a process of change in terms of how (and why) they lock this IP down.

[flipbrad]

I wonder whether this particular patent (and its licensing unavailability) is what is holding back micropayments?

[Tichy]

I am pretty sure that is not the problem.

[cabalamat]

As far as I can tell, the main problem with micropayments is to do them, a company has to be licensed as a bank. In the UK, the regulatory requirements for banking are such that it takes £100 million to set up a new one; other jurisdictions are similar I imagine.