One click patent redux: Canadian Federal Court determines Amazons ‘one click’ method is patentable

After spending a decade+ battle at the Canadian patent office and a patent review panel, the  Canadian Federal Court has overturned a patent commissioner’s ruling that Amazon.com could not patent its “one-click” order system designed for online shopping.
Amazon.com had filed the patent application under consideration for a “Method and system for placing a purchase order via a communication network” in September 1998. 
Justice Michael Phelan of the Federal Court of Canada ruled that: [T]he question is whether a “business method” is patentable under Canadian law. For the reasons which follow, the Court concludes that a “business method” can be patented in appropriate circumstances.
In an earlier proceeding before a panel,  the panel had overturned the Examiner’s finding on obviousness, but rejected the claims on the basis that they did not conform to the Canadian Patent Act and were not patentable subject matter.  The Commissioner relied on a 2004 dissent, and reasoned that business methods have traditionally been excluded in Canada. 
Justice Phelan then stated, “It has long been acknowledged that our pre-confederation Patent Act is derived not from the British statute, which post-dates ours, but from that of our American neighbours: “The principles underlying Canadian patent law both before and since Confederation accordingly approximate rather to those of the United States than to those of British patent law.”
Justice Phelan concluded that the claims constituted patentable subject matter and sent the case back for expedited re-examination.  


Justice Phelan found multiple flaws in the reasoning of the Commissioner:
The commissioner ignored fundamental differences between foreign and domestic regimes/Canadian legal principles altogether.   Citing a dissent was not enough for the commissioner to assume there was a “tradition” of excluding business methods from patentability in Canada.
The decision also made reference to the State Street bank case and the Bilski decision.
“The machine-or-transformation test may well provide a sufficient basis for evaluating processes similar to those in the Industrial Age – for example, inventions grounded in a physical or other tangible form. But there are reasons to doubt whether the test should be the sole criterion for determining the patentability of inventions in the Information Age.
Justice Phelan noted that the claimed invention (in Bilski) was found to be nonpatentable subject matter not because it was a a business method but because they were mere “schemes” or disembodied ideas. 
“To put it into the Canadian context, they did not have a practical application. In this sense a mere business scheme will have no practical embodiment and, like any other abstract idea or theorem, will of course be non-patentable. That is not the case with the business method claimed in the present case.”
He concluded that Amazon’s method is: “[A] practical application of the one-click concept, put into action through the use of cookies, computers, the Internet and the customer’s own action.” 


The complete decision can be accessed here.