Amazon.Com v. BarnesandNoble.Com

• Decision Date: 14 February 2001
• Citation: 239 F.3d 1343,57 USPQ2d 1747
• Parties: (Fed. Cir. 2001) AMAZON.COM, INC., Plaintiff-Appellee, v. BARNESANDNOBLE.COM, INC. and BARNESANDNOBLE.COM, LLC, Defendants-Appellants. 00-1109 DECIDED:
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Federal Circuit

Page 1343

239 F.3d 1343 (Fed. Cir. 2001)

AMAZON.COM, INC., Plaintiff-Appellee, v. BARNESANDNOBLE.COM, INC. and BARNESANDNOBLE.COM, LLC, Defendants-Appellants.

00-1109

United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit

DECIDED: February 14, 2001

Appealed from: United States District Court for the Western District of Washington Judge Marsha J. Pechman

[Copyrighted Material Omitted]

[Copyrighted Material Omitted]

Lynn H. Pasahow, McCutchen, Doyle, Brown & Enersen, LLP, of Palo Alto, California, argued for plaintiff-appellee. With her on the brief were J. David Hadden, of Palo Alto; and Beth H. Parker, Christopher B. Hockett, and Thomas S. Hixson, of San Francisco, from McCutchen, Doyle, Brown & Enersen, LLP. Of counsel was John R. Reese, McCutchen, Doyle, Brown & Enersen, LLP, of San Francisco, California. Of counsel on the brief were David J. Burman, Brian G. Bodine, and Jerry A. Riedinger, Perkins Coie, LLP, of Seattle, Washington.

Jonathan A. Marshall, Pennie & Edmonds LLP, of New York, New York, argued for defendants-appellants. With him on the brief were William G. Pecau, and Steven I. Wallach. Of counsel on the brief were Michael N. Rosen, and Mark J. Sugarman, Robinson Silverman Pearce Aronsohn & Berman LLP, of New York, New York. Of counsel was Stanton T. Lawrence III, of Pennie & Edmonds, of Washington, DC.

Before CLEVENGER, GAJARSA and LINN, Circuit Judges.

CLEVENGER, Circuit Judge.

This is a patent infringement suit brought by Amazon.com, Inc. ("Amazon") against barnesandnoble.com, inc., and barnesandnoble.com llc (together, "BN"). Amazon moved for a preliminary injunction to prohibit BN's use of a feature of its website called "Express Lane." BN resisted the preliminary injunction on several grounds, including that its Express Lane feature did not infringe the claims of Amazon's patent, and that substantial questions exist as to the validity of Amazon's patent. The United States District Court for the Western District of Washington rejected BN's contentions. Instead, the district court held that Amazon had presented a case showing a likelihood of infringement by BN, and that BN's challenges to the validity of the patent in suit lacked sufficient merit to avoid awarding extraordinary preliminary injunctive relief to Amazon. The district court granted Amazon's motion, and now BN brings its timely appeal from the order entering the preliminary injunction. We have jurisdiction to review the district court's order under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(c)(1) (1994).

After careful review of the district court's opinion, the record, and the arguments advanced by the parties, we conclude that BN has mounted a substantial challenge to the validity of the patent in suit. Because Amazon is not entitled to preliminary injunctive relief under these circumstances, we vacate the order of the district court that set the preliminary injunction in place and remand the case for further proceedings.

I

This case involves United States Patent No. 5,960,411 ("the '411 patent"), which issued on September 28, 1999, and is assigned to Amazon. On October 21, 1999, Amazon brought suit against BN alleging infringement of the patent and seeking a preliminary injunction.

Amazon's patent is directed to a method and system for "single action" ordering of items in a client/server environment such as the Internet. In the context of the '411 patent, a client/server environment describes the relationship between two computer systems in which a program executing on a client computer system makes a service request from another program executing on a server computer system, which fulfills the request. See col. 1, ll. 10-31; col. 3, ll. 31-33; col. 5, l. 56 to col. 6, l. 21; Fig. 2. Typically, the client computer system and the server computer system are located remotely from each other and communicate via a data communication network.

The '411 patent describes a method and system in which a consumer can complete a purchase order for an item via an electronic network using only a "single action," such as the click of a computer mouse button on the client computer system. Amazon developed the patent to cope with what it considered to be frustrations presented by what is known as the "shopping cart model" purchase system for electronic commerce purchasing events. In previous incarnations of the shopping cart model, a purchaser using a client computer system (such as a personal computer executing a web browser program) could select an item from an electronic catalog, typically by clicking on an "Add to Shopping Cart" icon, thereby placing the item in the "virtual" shopping cart. Other items from the catalog could be added to the shopping cart in the same manner. When the shopper completed the selecting process, the electronic commercial event would move to the check-out counter, so to speak. Then, information regarding the purchaser's identity, billing and shipping addresses, and credit payment method would be inserted into the transactional information base by the soon-to-be purchaser. Finally, the purchaser would "click" on a button displayed on the screen or somehow issue a command to execute the completed order, and the server computer system would verify and store the information concerning the transaction.

As is evident from the foregoing, an electronic commerce purchaser using the shopping cart model is required to perform several actions before achieving the ultimate goal of the placed order. The '411 patent sought to reduce the number of actions required from a consumer to effect a placed order. In the words of the written description of the '411 patent:

The present invention provides a method and system for single-action ordering of items in a client/server environment. The single-action ordering system of the present invention reduces the number of purchaser interactions needed to place an order and reduces the amount of sensitive information that is transmitted between a client system and a server system.

Col. 3, ll. 31-37. How, one may ask, is the number of purchaser interactions reduced? The answer is that the number of purchaser interactions is reduced because the purchaser has previously visited the seller's web site and has previously entered into the database of the seller all of the required billing and shipping information that is needed to effect a sales transaction. Thereafter, when the purchaser visits the seller's web site and wishes to purchase a product from that site, the patent specifies that only a single action is necessary to place the order for the item. In the words of the written description, "once the description of an item is displayed, the purchaser need only take a single action to place the order to purchase that item." Col. 3, ll. 64-66.

II

The '411 patent has 26 claims, 4 of which are independent. Independent claims 1 and 11 are method claims directed to placing an order for an item, while independent claim 6 is an apparatus claim directed to a client system for ordering an item, and independent claim 9 is an apparatus claim directed to a server system for generating an order. Amazon asserted claims 1-3, 5-12, 14-17, and 21-24 against BN. Although there are significant differences among the various independent and dependent claims in issue, for purposes of this appeal we may initially direct our primary focus on the "single action" limitation that is included in each claim. This focus is appropriate because BN's appeal attacks the injunction on the grounds that either its accused method does not infringe the "single action" limitation present in all of the claims, that the "single action" feature of the patent is invalid, or both.

We set forth below the text of the claims pertinent to our deliberations (i.e., claims 1, 2, 6, 9, and 11), with emphasis added to highlight the disputed claim terms:

1. A method of placing an order for an item comprising:

under control of a client system,

displaying information identifying the item; and in response to only a single action being performed, sending a request to order the item along with an identifier of a purchaser of the item to a server system; under control of a single-action ordering component of the server system, receiving the request; retrieving additional information previously stored for the purchaser identified by the identifier in the received request; and generating an order to purchase the requested item for the purchaser identified by the identifier in the received request using the retrieved additional information; and fulfilling the generated order to complete purchase of the item whereby the item is ordered without using a shopping cart ordering model.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the displaying of information includes displaying information indicating the single action.

. . . .

6. A client system for ordering an item comprising; an identifier that identifies a customer; a display component for displaying information identifying the item;

a single-action ordering component that in response to performance of only a single action, sends a request to a server system to order the identified item, the request including the identifier so that the server system can locate additional information needed to complete the order and so that the server system can fulfill the generated order to complete purchase of the item; and

a shopping cart ordering component that in response to performance of an add-to-shopping-cart action, sends a request to the server system to add the item to a shopping cart.

. . . .

9. A server system for generating an order comprising:

a shopping cart ordering component; and

a single-action ordering component including:

a data storage medium storing information for a plurality of users;

a receiving component for receiving requests to order an item, a request including an indication of one of the plurality of users, the request being sent in response to only a single action being performed; and

an order...