Patents Ethics in Patents in Amazon One Click

Patents are meant to protect the intellectual property of the people who apply for them. They are given when the process is a unique idea, or it offers an improvement to an existing idea that does not infringe on the original patent and is itself unique. The question is not whether patents themselves are ethical, but whether a business requesting a patent for a process, in its entirety, is ethical. People with different philosophical outlooks would see this case very differently. On the one had rule utilitarian's would see the patent rules and judge based on that criteria whereas a natural rights theorist would have a completely different outlook. This paper looks at the patent application for Amazon's revolutionary "one-click" payment processing through the lens of both a rule utilitarian and a natural rights theorist and determine how a person with that set of beliefs would accept and reject the patent proposal for Amazon.

Rule Utilitarian Granting Patent Request

The question here is whether the rule itself is correct or not. Basically, does Amazon have the right to have this patent based on the rules as they apply. Specifically...

The law for patents is very broad, and this is for a reason. A person is encouraged to apply for a patent in U.S. law because it is a means to encourage innovation and provides the inventor with some assurance that there intellectual property will not be stolen. The rule utilitarian would vote in favor of the application because patents are granted to people who have a unique vision for a product. The fact that Amazon, or one of its employees under contract, devised this method of payment means that they have the right to hold exclusive rights to it. The product is unique and it does not infringe on any other previous patented material. Also, it should be granted based on the fact that whether the pathway is changed or not, the end product of one-click functionality is the same. So, the patent should be granted based on the patent law.
Rule Utilitarian Denying Patent Request

To deny the patent request, this same individual would have to have a rule that somehow disputed the facts of the patent. It may be that this product is the sole intellectual property of Amazon, but that does…