The protest ended with O'Reilly and Bezos visiting Washington, D.C., to lobby for patent reform. Bezos responded with his own open letter. O'Reilly collected 10,000 signatures with this petition. Industry leaders Tim O'Reilly and Charlie Jackson spoke out against the patent, and O'Reilly published an open letter to Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, protesting the 1-click patent and the affiliate program patent, and petitioning him to "avoid any attempts to limit the further development of Internet commerce". On February 22, 2000, the company was granted a patent covering an Internet-based customer referral system, or what is commonly called an "affiliate program". The boycott was discontinued in September 2002. Amazon's use of the 1-click patent against competitor Barnes & Noble's website led the Free Software Foundation to announce a boycott of Amazon in December 1999. The " 1-Click patent" is perhaps the best-known example of this. The company has been controversial for its alleged use of patents as a competitive hindrance. offering the option to either add an item to the user's cart, or purchase it immediately using 1-Click
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |