For 18 years, Amazon owned a single click. Rival checkouts had to add an extra s
By Ryanmcraver · November 10, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
For 18 years, Amazon owned a single click.
Rival checkouts had to add an extra step.
In September 1997, Amazon filed a patent on buying an item with one click using a stored address and card on file.
The US Patent Office granted Patent No. 5,960,411 on September 28, 1999.
Three weeks later, Amazon sued Barnes & Noble over its one-click "Express Lane" button.
A federal judge granted an injunction that December, right in the middle of holiday shopping, forcing Barnes & Noble to add a second confirmation click to its checkout.
Apple took the other route. In September 2000, Steve Jobs paid to license 1-Click from Amazon so Apple could use it on its online store and later inside iTunes, where buying a $0.99 song needed to be impulse-fast.
For nearly two decades, while Amazon and Apple let shoppers buy in a single tap, every other ecommerce checkout had to put a speed bump in front of the customer.
The bigger story is what happened once the patent expired in September 2017. Shopify launched Shopify Pay that same year, and one-tap checkout from Stripe, Apple Pay and PayPal quickly became standard across direct-to-consumer stores.
Amazon didn't spend 18 years defending a button in court for the novelty. It defended it because every extra field, page load and confirmation click between intent and purchase bleeds conversion, and conversion is what pays for customer acquisition.
Now the same battle is moving to AI shopping agents: whoever holds the saved credentials and the shortest path to checkout collects the sale.
Source: US Patent No. 5,960,411, Amazon press releases (1999, 2000)
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