Peter Calveley of Auckland, New Zealand, after receiving poor service from Amazon, took it upon himself to document the prior art on Amazon’s one click patent. The USPTO review his research, and invalidated 21 of 26 of the claims in the patent.

Mr Calveley, whose previous claim to fame is having “worked as a motion capture performer and appeared as part of the evil armies in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings”.

It’s amazing what disgruntled customer, his blog, and a few thousand customers can do.

What is even more amazing is that the USPTO didn’t punt this whole thing.