Amazon was granted a patent in 1999 for “1-click” purchases.

This patent proved to be so expansive that it was licensed by other tech giants like Apple, instead of fighting it. Ever purchased a song on iTunes with a single tap? You just paid a royalty to Amazon via Apple’s license agreement.

Well, not anymore. That patent expired yesterday. (source)

The text of the patent harkens back to a much earlier time in the history of the web, where client-server interactions and stateful web sessions must have seemed like a strange and new thing (at least to the folks who approve patents). Its crazy to think that this basic request-response interaction could once have qualified as an invention… I wonder how much Amazon banked off this over the years.