I went to your site, and read the nonsense you wrote at that link. You are so over-hydrated by the pro-IP kool-aid that you actually stood in vehement defense of the Amazon one-click patent.

It will be tough to argue with you. That’s because maximalists like you are incapable of debate. You see the issue of IP as black and white. You don’t acknowledge that there are costs to IP, costs to patents, and costs to government-interference monopolies guaranteed to the first to file.

On this site, many admit to the benefits that patents might offer in terms of incentive to create, yet we think the societal costs are greater than the gains. We love to discuss it and argue the evidence. That’s hard to do with extremists who write us off as “socialist morons” who just want everything for free.

For the record, your views of patents are more socialist than ours, since you are advocating government interference in the free market. If you’re going to argue pro-government interference, just embrace it. Don’t lie to yourself and others.

Your suggestion that Barnes and Noble should have “innovated around” the Amazon patent by coming up with a “two click” patent is almost comical. What should the next bookstore do? Naturally, you would suggest a creative three click approach! And so on, and so on, until “a method for purchasing goods online with just” 1 through n clicks are all patented. That’s dumb for a variety of reasons:

– any new entrant with a web store would be discouraged to enter the market, because they would get a lawsuit (or a license ‘tax’) if their store used any number of clicks between 0 and n.

– one-click WAS obvious, and inevitable because of the very nature of this: The mantra in e-commerce is that you lose 50% of sales on each click. That market pressure would naturally drive all e-commerce vendors towards reduced clicks, eventually landing at the greatest non-zero integer.

– it is a waste of government resources, business resources, and time to focus on patenting click numbers that does nothing good for society. All these resources you suggest should be spent at the USPTO should actually be spend building better products and competing in the marketplace.

Calling B&N “lazy” for not “inventing” two clicks is the kind of twisted conclusion one might come to if they were capable of kidding themselves that 1-click was creative.

Do you really want to argue the benefits of the patent system over the subject of the 1-click patent? Seems like a big gamble on your part to pick one of the most famous bad patents. What made this patent such a slam-dunk discussion point for IP-minimalists was that any American not involved in the IP discussion could use their common sense, and see that something was wrong with the system. If your policy choices offend the common sense of the vast majority of your countrymen, you should at least consider alternate policies.