KEY POINTS:
The Auckland actor who challenged Amazon.com over its long-held patent for no fuss online shopping, is claiming "mission accomplished" in his three-year battle with the web-based retailer.
According to documents lodged in the aftermath of an adverse ruling handed down last month by the US Patents and Trademarks Office (USPTO), Amazon has proposed amendments to its claim over the famous "1 Click" patent.
Those changes, according to New Zealander Peter Calveley, amounts to a narrowing down of claims over the patented payments process, leaving it open to many more people to use or adapt for use.
Mr Calveley - who started his campaign partly to relieve boredom - said this was just the outcome he was hoping for when he set off on in his one-man campaign to challenge Amazon's patent in 2004.
"This breaks the monopoly of shopping with one click," he told the Sydney Morning Herald.
"It's exactly what I wanted. Victory, woo hoo!"
He says that evidence he presented to the USPTO that Amazon did not invent the process was "so clear a nd so compelling" that the company was forced to back down on its claim over the patent.
The draft amendments still need to be formally accepted by Amazon, but as the compromise emerged after talks with the patent examiner at the USPTO, it seems likely that they will be ratified.
Amazon could not be reached immediately for comment.
The amendment means that Amazon's patent claim will in future only apply to "items purchasable through a shopping cart model", not the carte blanche model that currently exists as US Patent number 5,960,411, described as a "method and system for placing a purchase order via a communications network".
In subsequent purchases after a shopper has already input their credit card details, the patented process enables online shoppers to buy goods with the single click of a mouse button. By accelerating the process, the shopper is less likely to back out of a transaction.
Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder and its CEO, is listed as one of the four inventors.
In 1999, less than a month after the patent was approved, Amazon sued one of its major competitors, barnesandnoble.com, for using a similar
process on its website. The company was forced to stop using it after losing the court case.
Mr Calveley, 37, launched his crusade against Amazon after he had problems with deliveries of a book ordered through the online retailer in September 2004.
After trawling the US patent records, he found another patent and references to similar types of payments systems which pre-dated Amazon's process.
With the help of donations from readers of his blog, Mr Calveley was able to cobble together the US$2520 ($3400) fee the Patent Office charges to re-open patent examinations.
In May 2006, the USPTO announced his request for a re-examination had been granted after an initial investigation raised "substantial new question of patentability of claims".
In October 2007, after a 17-month investigation, the USPTO handed down a decision rejecting all but five of Amazon's 26 claims to the patent.
Mr Calveley said it was ironic that he gained much of his information from a subsidiary of Amazon itself. He also said that he acted because so little happens in New Zealand that he was bored.
He told technology law podcast Out-Law Radio that he had gathered much of his information for his campaign to have the patent revoked from archive.org, whose information is provided by Alexa, an Amazon company.
"So thanks. Amazon."
Mr Calveley said he engaged in an 18-month lone battle with one of the internet's most successful companies because he was bored.
"I live in New Zealand. New Zealand is a very boring place. You have to come up with something to do," he said. "I was toying with the idea and then I got annoyed by this book that was a bit late so I thought well, why not?"
- NZPA
