This is a real problem, and some of its seriousness is a result of the decades-long history of software patenting. If it seems like people like me are over-reacting, consider why I'm coming from first, and try to see the big picture. Amazon is providing the biggest target to come along in years, and it's as good a time as any to educate the public about this abstract issue.
In fact, with a particularly strict reading of software patents, one can hardly get an education and fulfill the programming assignments given to students without tripping over a patent or three. For instance, looking at the above linked examples page, I notice that I infringed on Patent #5,175,857, in my second Computer Science class I took. ("Quicksort implemented using a linked list of pointers to the objects to be sorted.") A college sophomore did it all by his lonesome. Either I'm a genius (along with a good 5 or 6 other people in my class who did it the same way... lotsa geniuses for one class, don't ya think?), or it's not that non-obvious.
And that's the real problem; you can't write a significant program without stumbling over patents; clearly, they can't all be that non-obvious!
Now, if Amazon wants to patent their particular implementation, with Sun Solaris servers running this special Amazon.com program and hooking into the bank of 20 WinNT servers over there that links through to Visa after we filter it with this software... etc. that would not bother me. You would not be likely to stumble over this patent accidentally.
But if Amazon recieves a patent for "one click shopping"... how are we supposed to get around that and create competing systems? Basically, in the software world, there are only a few ways to do any given operation, and even fewer of those are reasonable. After all, when it comes down to it, all computers work off of three basic operations: Read, Write, Move Pointer (Turing Machines if you're into that sort of thing). With software patents, there can often be no competing design, as the only workable design is patented. That's not reasonable.
P.S., why am I so annoyed? After all, a lot of people have been pointing out that it's the Patent Office that granted the patent, not Amazon. The problem is the broad nature of these patents. With physical patents, such as the turn-blinker stick you have in your car, there are ways around the problem. There are several implementations of this simple device because of patent issues, and it's not a big deal. Car companies can afford to design a new one if necessary, and lisense it if they don't want to do that.
FreePatents.org: 'On June 24 and 25 1999 in Paris, France, the European member states of the Munchen convention met and discussed the software patent issue. They have decided to wait for one more year before taking any final decision regarding article 52.2, which says that computer programmes as such are not patentable.'
The Software Patent Institute has among its members some who believe strongly in the desirability of patents for software-related inventions and some who are strongly opposed to patents for software-related inventions. SPI deliberately takes no position on this issue, or on any particular patent or litigation. We believe that there is a current lack of readily-available information concerning software technology, and we are attempting to help solve that problem.
Software Patent Institute Mission Statement: The Software Patent Institute is dedicated to providing information to the public and assisting the United States Patent and Trademark Office and others by providing technical support in the form of educational and training programs and providing access to information and retrieval resources concerning software prior art. . .