Amazon's 1-Click is responsible for making the firm a decent amount of money over the years. Certainly, it's produced enough revenue for Amazon to defend its exclusivity of it in the courts, at great cost. But the bad news for Amazon is that its patent on this technology expires in 2017, and it's likely we'll see a lot of online stores adopting similar.
Amazon first applied for a patent on 1-Click in 1997, and it was granted in 1999. The core of the proposition is that by storing your payment and address details you only need to click a single button to order something. This means that there are fewer steps to ordering, which is less time-consuming and what is termed "frictionless".
Some articles I've read have suggested this whole 1-Click business could be worth as much as $2.4bn to Amazon. I suspect that, while there is no doubt value to the speed at which one can order something, the real advantage here is about creating an experience that isn't widely available on any other online store.
There is one clear exception to this - Apple, which uses its own version of Amazon's system and pays the company an undisclosed sum of money to do so. You might have noticed that Apple's app store ordering system is similarly frictionless. Imagine if you had to add apps and similar to a cart first, it would almost certainly hamper sales. Which sort of proves Amazon's point when it comes to this system.
Of course, 1-Click is part of something within Amazon that makes it a preferred retail destination for people. I can speak personally, but as a Prime subscriber I will pick Amazon for shipping speed and the fact that next day (in the UK) is included. I don't personally use 1-Click, but I can see how people find it useful. As someone with an Echo, I can also attest to the ease with which it can be used to make orders on Amazon, and this is all part of the firm's plan to make us spend as much money there as possible.
The path for 1-Click hasn't been entirely clear though. The European Union refuses to grant (PDF link) a patent to Amazon for it. The European Patent Office described the underlying technology as "too obvious" and reliant on prior art. The argument being primarily that Amazon is just setting cookies, and any retailer could do that and achieve the same results.
Canada initially resisted issuing a patent to Amazon over 1-Click, but the firm fought a legal battle and the patent was issued in 2011. The fuss around it caused Canada to rework some guidelines on patent applications. And it wasn't just Canada and Europe who didn't feel a patent was justified, Australia also rejected the claim on several points.
While Amazon would, no doubt, love to hang on to this patent it's probably not going to have as big an impact as it once might. These days Amazon is about selling a wide range of goods and delivering them very quickly. I'd say that 1-Click was good when they brought it in, but these days Amazon has built-up a lot of brand loyality. I can't see people going elsewhere just because other stores will have a single button to buy things. Plus, Amazon is dreaming of bigger things that will bring in even more profits over the coming years.
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