Monday, February 28, 2000

2/28/00 10:43:28 AM

• Amazon takes a step too far. Last week Amazon.com received their second big "method of doing business" patent, this one for the idea of affiliate programs.

  Amazon has not said what, if anything, it will do with this newly granted patent. But as soon as the company had received a patent on one-click ordering last fall, it sued Barnes & Noble and got an injunction forcing bn.com to dismantle its own single-click system. And Amazon.com has been granted at least 10 broad patents on e-commerce methodologies (see the list gathered by Jon Hedley in this Slashdot discussion).

  Enough.

  I've removed all the Amazon Associate links from the TBTF site and joined the affiliates' program for Powell's Books. Over time I may add a few other such programs to the mix; Borders looks pretty reasonable. I've also signed up as a public supporter of the Amazon.com boycott at NoWebPatents.org. (Note that Richard Stallman was the first to call publicly for a boycott of Amazon.com. I didn't cover his campaign last fall, but I'm on board now.)

  The poster-child of e-commerce has turned down the wrong street in its handling of its intellectual property. Watch over the next few weeks as the press and public begin to sour on Amazon.com. Amazon's aggressive deployment of its patent portfolio may help its stock price in the short run, but over time a spreading boycott and customer defections could hit the company's bottom line.

  One early negative report comes from Dan Gilmore's Web log. Gilmore links to Greg Aharonian's celebration of bad patents and to two Amazon-boycott sites (but not to Stallman's original page). Dave Winer posted a thoughtful essay on Amazon.com's aggressive, take-no-prisoners style of competition, in contrast to the "competition with respect" that Winer's Web-log tool efforts enjoy with respect to Blogger. It's a big-hearted piece and I think Dave deserves a pat on the back for it.

  [Note added 2000-02-28, 10:02 pm:] Tim O'Reilly has publicly urged Amazon to drop its pursuit of the 1-Click patent and posted a page where others can add their public comments to Amazon.