Yesterday while browsing comments on Slashdot I found a link to an article at LinuxToday on Tim O'Reilly's Open Letter: Rethinking the One-Click Patent which contains the following excerpt from a posting by Tim O'Reilly on the Amazon 1-Click patent controversy

People in many areas of commerce, not just on the Web but also TV and radio (as evidenced by some of our prior art submissions), have put a lot of thought into making the shopping experience quicker and easier. And yet none of these folks really managed to simplify it to the same degree that Amazon did with 1-Click. In the end, we did not have a winner, and it doesn't look as if the prior art submitted can "knock out" the 1-Click patent...So I want to offer Jeff something of an apology. At the same time, at the risk of appearing a "sore loser," I want to reiterate that my fundamental issue with Amazon was never the specific claims of the 1-Click patent. Even if Amazon did create a genuine e-commerce innovation, I maintain that it was still a mistake for them to patent it.

I remember the hubbub on Slashdot about Amazon's 1-Click patent and Tim O'Reilly's bounty for prior art but don't remember this ever getting posted. So it seems that despite all the claims of "obviousness" from the Slashdot crowd, no prior art could be found. I guess it is true that all innovations look obvious in hindsight.

Another interesting data point is this post on Slashdot about the various patent lawsuits Amazon is currently fighting. Lots of people like to polarize the debate about software patents but in truth the situation isn't as cut and dried as folks on either side of the debate like to make it seem.