From Good Morning Silicon Valley…

Intriguing news, this: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office plans to review Amazon.com’s overly broad and decidedly unoriginal 1-Click business method patent after a New Zealand actor successful raised a “substantial new question” of patentability. Irked about a slow book delivery, actor Peter Calveley went digging in the USPTO archives and uncovered a patent describing a “single action” to be used in ordering an item, a method very similar to Amazon’s 1-Click. That patent, written up by a company called DigiCash, was filed in 1996 — years before Amazon was awarded the patent that would inspire its infamous infringement suit against rival bookseller Barnes & Noble.com…

Calvely posted news of this potential prior art to his blog and sparked enough interest that he was able to raise the USPTO’s $2,520 re-examination fee. And now the USPTO has decided to follow through. Watch this space.