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Old ally slams Amazon on patent filings



Online retailer Amazon.com Inc. came under increasing pressure Tuesday to
back off from patent claims on "obvious" business ideas.
This time the criticism came from an old ally, Timothy O'Reilly, president
and CEO of computer book publisher O'Reilly & Associates.

In an open letter to Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN), O'Reilly criticized the
company for patenting ideas that he said were as obvious as "1-click
ordering" and an "affiliate program."
 
The patent furor: Does Amazon have a valid claim? 
 
"Once the Web becomes fenced in by competing patents and other attempts to
make this glorious open playing field into a proprietary wasteland, the
springs of further innovation will dry up," O'Reilly wrote. "In short, I
think you are pissing in the well."

http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2453677,00.html

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Lisa Potter
School of Information and Library Science
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill