INTERNET übergeeks were beside themselves with anger last week after
Apple Computer licensed a controversial patent on “one-click shopping” from
online book-seller Amazon.com. It’s one of the most heavily criticised Internet
patents ever granted
(Â鶹´«Ã½, 8 April, p 14).
With one-click shopping, customers don’t 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’s patent was granted last September, and it sued online rival
Barnes&noble.com a month later to stop it using a similar system. In…
