Amazon's 1-click hit with patent loss in Oz Australia’s Patent Office has decided that some aspects of Amazon’s notorious “1-click” patent lack either “novelty” or “an inventive step”, in a decision handed down on May 9th. Opposition to the patent under Australian jurisdiction was filed by Telstra back in 2003. Telstra had objected to the patent on the basis of twenty “ …
...they have a version of the Patent registered in Australia. We don't use the US patent system over here on account of us not being (yet anyway) formal members of the Union. We have our own separate (though very similar) IP bodies. You generally have to register patents in every economic region you wish to enforce the patent in, not just the Land of the Free. And generally you challenge each version of the patent in its respective juristiction. Even an "International Patent" is really just a way to have the same patent application entered into multiple country's systems at once. (IIRC-IANAL)
There is no such thing as an 'International Patent'.
There is an 'International Patent Application' (PCT), but that never becomes international or supra-national granted patent rights.
Even a European Patent is not a supra-national granted patent right: when it is eventually granted, it becomes one or more national patent(s) in selected Member State(s) of the European Patent Convention.
With ref to the article, I certainly wouldn't go as far as to call this a 'win', even in a 'legal PR' context (whatever that may be). It will only be a win if, as and when IP Australia (the Australian patent office) rejects proposed amendments to the claims and the patent is finally revoked.
<i>You generally have to register patents in every economic region you wish to enforce the patent in, not just the Land of the Free. And generally you challenge each version of the patent in its respective juristiction</i> Correct.
Put simply, an online e-tailer based wherever (except countries where Amazon owns a national 1-click patent) can sell whatever to whomever wherever (except countries where Amazon owns a national 1-click patent) with a 1-click ordering system.
There is also the question of validity of these patents, of course: it's one thing to have gotten them granted when the going was...erm...'smoother' for software patents, but quite another to enforce them nowadays when their validity would be challenged under the 'new regime' (and, in all likelihood, terminally so).
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