Expedia says telling a vendor what you'll pay and seeing if it's accepted is an ancient practice. Expedia lost a dismissal motion and the case is pending. The priceline patent is narrow enough that it may survive. Rivals can do similar systems that refine the model, though priceline will try to stop any that copy it too closely. Even though Amazon now believes the trend toward business process patents may hurt the Web, it went to court for an injunction stopping a rival bookstore from using ''one-click'' shopping last Christmas.
Critics say the process was too obvious to be patentable.
Barnesandnoble will have to rebut the patent office's finding that if one-click shopping were obvious, someone would have done it before. Mercata's site raises doubts about whether the idea was novel enough to patent. Also, group buying is common in the physical world. Mercata has 11 patents pending and says it will not be hampered by MobShop. CoolSavings v. Response Reward Systems, BrightStreet, et.