Patent Amazon.com has become one of the biggest online retailers. Amazon.com, Inc., enables customers to find and purchase books, music, videos, consumer electronics, games, toys, gifts, and other items over the Internet by using its website www.amazon.com. As an early entrant into this market, Amazon.com became a leader in e-commerce. Other e-commerce retailers began offering goods and services for sale over the web.

One problem that Amazon.com and other e-commerce retailers faced was that more than 50 percent of potential customers who went shopping online and selected items for purchase abandoned their transactions before checkout. To address this problem, Amazon.com devised and implemented a method that enabled online customers to purchase selected items with a single click of a computer mouse button. A customer who had previously registered his or her name, address, and credit card number with Amazon.com could complete purchases by clicking an instant "buy" button. Amazon.com applied for a software patent for its one-click ordering system, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) granted patent no. 5,960,411 ('411 patent) to Amazon.com. Amazon.com designated this as the "1-click^®" ordering system.

While Amazon.com's patent application was pending, other online retailers began offering similar one-click ordering systems. One was Barnesandnoble.com, which operates a website through which it sells books, software, music, movies, and other items. Amazon.com sued Barnesandnoble.com, alleging patent infringement, and sought an injunction against Barnesandnoble.com from using its one-click ordering system. Barnesandnoble.com defended, asserting that a one-click ordering system is clearly obvious and, therefore, did not meet the required "nonobvious" test of federal patent law for an invention to qualify for a patent. Was Amazon's 1-click ordering system nonobvious and therefore qualified for a patent?