FFII et al ./ Amazon
Opposition against Amazon Gift
Ordering Patent
Hartmut PILCH
http://eupat.ffii.org/07/12/amazon07
June 20, 2008
The EPO will probably revoke the patent for lack of inventive step and use
the case to re-emphasize its doctrine of 2000 (Pension Benefits) according to
which software is patentable when claimed in connection with a computer.
Hartmut Pilch and Georg Jakob are representing the FFII at the Oral Pro-
ceeding on 2007-12-07 09:00 at EPO PH Rm 3468.
Contents
1 Current Situation
1
1.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1
1.2 Live Report from the EPO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2
2 Timeline
3
3 Chronology
3
4 The Amazon One-Click patent family at the US and European Patent Of-
fices
3
5 Resources
4
6 History
4
1
1 Current Situation
1 Current Situation
1.1 Overview
The Amazon Gift Ordering Patent EP0927945 teaches nothing new or inventive. It
claims exclusive rights to a certain class of computer programs and some subclasses
thereof, one per claim. As usual, the claims also state what the allegedly novel teaching
(i.e. the invention, the contribution) is. Amazon’s claimed invention consists of nothing
but a business method, more or less thinly veiled in computing jargon. In order to
defend their claims, Amazon’s lawyers have submitted 3 auxiliary requests in which the
claims are supposedly narrowed down by further “technical features”. As usual, these
features refer to general-purpose computing abstractions, which are hardly less abstract
and general than the corresponding business method concepts.
Judging by the preliminary communication from the EPO, Amazon is likely to lose its
main request at this time’s oral proceedings. However the EPO’s reasoning restates the
recent doctrines of the Controlling Pension Benefits System decision of 2000, which in-
spired the European Commission’s software patent directive proposal of 2002. According
to these doctrines, all software is patentable in Europe and the legal provisions of A