That was very clever. The insight was to make both buying and undoing the buy easy. For a few minutes after an Amazon one-click buy, you can undo it. That's what made one-click purchases non-scary. Most E-commerce systems still don't get this. Once you've clicked "buy", it's "Mwaaah, we have your money now, sucker!"

Granted this is a totally inadequate solution, but in all cases where I've made an online order from a reputable seller and wanted to cancel it before it shipped, I have been able to call the business over the phone, provide them with the invoice number, and successfully cancel the order. I've only had problems in cases where "I should have known better than to order on that site" to begin with.

I'm perfectly fine calling someone on the phone, but many other millennials strongly dislike phone conversations.

Every reputable seller also has email. In Amazon's case you don't even need that, you just need to click a button.

  In Amazon's case you don't even need that, you just need 
  to click a button.

Yes, that was the point of the thread. On Amazon's site, order cancellations are automated and can be done on the website, while for many other online stores you have to contact a human to do it manually.

"Due to unusually high call volume..."

Not to be harsh at all, but I think that you may have misread his point. Its not that Amazon is unwilling to use a patent for evil, its that the "evil" purpose in this case is the opposite of the usual case.

It is very much in Amazon's best interest for competitors never to deploy a technology like this. I'm sure that lots of people have placed Amazon orders from inside of Target stores after seeing cheaper prices at Amazon.com, for example.

This could be a offensive patent in the since that they could aggressively pursue anyone who implements it, while never implementing it themselves.

Who knew this expires in 88 days on September 12th. 20 years already.

While it's true that a business won't shy away from leaning on its intellectual property to beat out competitors when necessary, it is also true that having your own strong patent portfolio is one of the best defenses against patent lawsuits from competitors and (some types of) patent trolls. It's sort of a mutually-assured destruction thing, where they won't sue you over X because they know you could sue them over Y.

There is also the possibility that if you don't file the patent, someone else will, and it's better for you to be in control of that property than to leave it for someone who is potentially much worse to obtain.

This is pretty much the dilemma involved in any willful abdication or refusal to seize property/power. It's particularly relevant to competent engineers who opt out of office politics because they dislike the BS, which means the task is left to the incompetent. This results in suffering for everyone.

If something is under your control, even if you're not actively doing much with it, you're preventing an adversary from taking it instead.

Great joke. I chuckled