
Steve Jobs licensed Amazon’s one-click patent for $1M in one phone call - hellofunk
https://qz.com/1392502/steve-jobs-licensed-amazons-one-click-patent-for-1-million-in-one-phone-call/
======
GeekyBear
In that same Wired story that is the source for the blurb at the heart of this
one is the most Steve Jobs tale ever told.

Scott Forstall tells that Steve always insisted on paying for lunch for both
of them every time they ate in the company cafeteria together.

Scott felt bad about making Steve wait for him at the checkout if he ordered
something customized that took longer to prepare.

However, Steve insisted because he was paying by swiping his employee badge
which automatically debited against your next pay period.

Since Steve was paid in stock, with only a one dollar a year salary there was
nothing for the company accounting system to debit against, so although he was
"the man" at Apple he took a perverse pleasure in simultaneously sticking it
to the man.

~~~
snowwrestler
This is the same guy who would trade in his leased Mercedes in less than 6
months so that he could have a barcode for a license plate.

Culturally, he was a hacker--looking for the gaps in institutional systems and
getting a perverse pleasure in exploiting them.

~~~
hvdhh7
Billionaire sticks it to the Man by carefully following his rules and getting
brand new Mercedes every six months.

~~~
saudioger
Yeah I feel like this is more "sticking it to the average person who could
never afford this" than "the man"

Steve Jobs' personality had a large role in pushing his success, but it's also
the type of personality of someone who just wants to be different because they
think being different is superior (and yes: sometimes it is, sometimes it
isn't). If he were a kid in the 90s he'd be ~~ tYpInG aLl hIs ImS lIkE tHiS ~~

~~~
jdswain
Like this? NeXTstep NextStep NEXTstep...

------
tooltalk
Speaking of licensing and Jobs's quick decision-making, the following is what
you don't usually hear from Jobs's inner circle:
([https://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good-
arti...](https://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good-artists-copy-
great-artists-steal/))

"I feel for Google – Steve Jobs threatened to sue me, too.

In 2003, after I unveiled a prototype Linux desktop called Project Looking
Glass*, Steve called my office to let me know the graphical effects were
'stepping all over Apple’s IP'. (IP = Intellectual Property = patents,
trademarks and copyrights.) If we moved forward to commercialize it, 'I’ll
just sue you.'

My response was simple. 'Steve, I was just watching your last presentation,
and Keynote looks identical to Concurrence – do you own that IP?' Concurrence
was a presentation product built by Lighthouse Design, a company I’d help to
found and which Sun acquired in 1996. Lighthouse built applications for
NeXTSTEP, the Unix based operating system whose core would become the
foundation for all Mac products after Apple acquired NeXT in 1996. Steve had
used Concurrence for years, and as Apple built their own presentation tool, it
was obvious where they’d found inspiration. 'And last I checked, MacOS is now
built on Unix. I think Sun has a few OS patents, too.' Steve was silent.

And that was the last I heard on the topic..."

so this is one example in which Jobs's poor decision making didn't pan out as
he had hoped.

~~~
sundarurfriend
Is the * after Looking Glass part of the name, or did you mean to put a
footnote on it and forget?

~~~
tooltalk
My bad; that's not my footnote. Please see the original post:

    
    
      * To see a Looking Glass demo, click here – it starts at the ~2:00 minute mark.

~~~
coldtea
I remember the project Looking Glass.

It was one "few days work" demo somebody threw around when they first were
able to manipulate windows in 3D in a compositor with Java, but it got
traction in parts of the OSS blogosphere/forums as some revolutionary new
desktop experience (even though there were already several similar commercial
offerings, and itself was little more than some little-thought 3D
manipulations and in no way an actual full SUN project).

It was touted as "SUN innovation" example, and predictably, it got nowhere.

Here it is in all its glory. Even then it was a derivative, no-sense concept:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1JwfgBv5bg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1JwfgBv5bg)

I've seen the same story play out several times.

E.g. there was a node.js based editor that was the talk of HN for a while. Got
nowhere, was just a simple editing window + crude syntax highlighting, and it
was obvious from the start that it wont go anywhere with its direction and
chops, but not if you heard the gasps just because somebody powered an editor
with Node:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2020673](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2020673)

Or the Lighttable editor -- itself being abandoned for the next shiny
endeavor, which again makes sense as it was just some inline REPL touches on
top of a crude editor. At least that explored the design space a little, but
the promises where touting it as the next thing that will revolutionize
programming...

~~~
notofox
The Lighttable Saga is def a sad one and occasionally kind of irritates me.

I have no idea of what "really happened", but my layman's interpretation of
how that went down is...

\- Make a great thing w potential.

\- Kickstarter it.

\- Rush to meet the KS deadline.

\- Get frustrated. Abandon it.

\- Take VC money to take "the next step" (Eve)

\- Spend VC millions over X years, release some ideas in WIP repos, nothing
holistic or truly practical.

\- Fold.

\- Then go to work for a proprietary Database Tools Vendor who will implicitly
inherit any learning made during the previous projects.

Sadness and "loss" everywhere. If I was a VC in that early deal, I'd be pissed
when Looker "finally releases" Eve as some middle-ware BI system.

------
ghshephard
It worked out well for both of them. I recall, at the time, when Apple did the
deal for $1mm, that it provided a lot of validity to Amazon that their patent
was for real, and any vendor that was directly competitive with Amazon would
likely think, at least a little bit longer, before directly ignoring Amazon's
patent on "one-click" purchasing.

~~~
vanderZwan
This article does not in any way provide us with enough information to
conclude whether it was a good licensing deal for either party. It just tells
a romanticized Steve Jobs business story.

We don't know if this license helped Apple sell so many products that it paid
back the investment.

For Amazon it obviously worked out on two fronts, since they also got paid 1M.
Unless you mean that this has to be weighed against lost Apple product sales
on Amazon? Were Apple products even for sale on Amazon at the time?

~~~
jm4
Us old timers remember what was happening at the time. It turns out it was an
incredible deal for both sides.

The 1-click patent didn't have a great deal of credibility at the time. Many
people in the tech industry were railing against Amazon and 1-click. It seemed
like such a stupid patent and I think a lot of people didn't expect it to hold
up.

Apple launched the iTunes store with $0.99 mp3's during the same period and
the whole thing hinged on 1-click shopping. You could click a button to
preview and there was one right next to it that would buy the song. No
confirmation screens or checkout process. Downloaded and added to your
library. It was so easy and people were spending a fortune on there because
there was nothing else like it. Keep in mind this is one the heels of the
decline of Napster and other mainstream P2P apps. People were being ratted out
by their ISPs, sued and settling for $3000 for downloading some crummy song.
Here you could do it legally and inexpensively and with a great UX because of
1-click. And for the first time you could buy a single song instead of an
entire album. Prior to that, we had "singles" that contained a radio song from
the album and a couple b-sides for like $5-8.

Apple had to launch iTunes with 1-click for it to be successful. The $1M
license fee cost far less than the inevitable lawsuit would have. They made a
fortune with iTunes and used it to enter new product categories. You could
argue that that was one of the pivotal moments that transformed the company
into what it is today. That licensing fee was highway robbery.

You also have Amazon who, at the time, had an outstanding selection, the best
prices, fast handling times, reliable shipping and the most friction free
buying process anywhere. Many retail sites didn't even have user accounts back
then. You would enter your info with each order. The ones that did have
accounts still made you click through several screens to place an order.

Amazon's end of the deal is they got paid $1M to not have to sue anyone (and
possible lose) and have their ridiculous patent become credible overnight. The
result was they maintained their superior online shopping experience by
preventing others from mimicking it and leveraged it to become the beast they
are today.

~~~
cuboidGoat
Was just thinking, if the click takes you to a page with a countdown timer and
a big cancel button, and the page then makes the purchase at the end of the
countdown, with the timer length being part of the user account settings, as
long as the timer is not zero, that is not presumably a one click purchase,
under the terms of the one click patent, as it is not a single action by the
customer that purchases the product.

Also, it would be nice anyway to have an adjustable brief cooling off timer on
an order, so is a nice implementation idea regardless of the one click patent.

~~~
jm4
I have no idea. In any case, Jobs never would have allowed it. The iTunes
Store has the optimal purchasing process that happened to be covered by
Amazon’s patent. They took the cheap way out. That same UX morphed into the
AppStore after the iPhone. Then it made its way into the Apple TV.

Everyone has it now. I wonder if they got as good a deal as Apple did. We all
expected someone big to fight that patent. Apple basically said “f- this” and
took the easy way out even if it meant everyone else would get screwed. One of
the few times Apple had first mover advantage.

~~~
cuboidGoat
Jobs wouldn't have allowed it because it is something that would at first
glance reduce purchases, as it allows people to back out immediately if they
click buy.

As far as design patterns for purchasing go, I would say it is probably more
optimal than a simple one-click, if optimising for both the buyer and seller's
interests. One-click is more optimal if you are only optimising for the
seller.

------
usrusr
One phone call? If he licenced the patent in one _click_ , now that would have
been impressive!

------
fbn79
one-click patent is one of the most stupid patents

~~~
amsilprotag
From the end of the article:

 _As for the one-click payment system that helped build both their online
stores, the US patent to that expired in September 2017._

I could understand allowing a months-long patent of this kind, but 18 years
seems about an order of magnitude too long.

~~~
peapicker
It take 5-7 years just to get a patent at the moment, the patent system is so
backed up. (personal experience, I have 2 and have 4 more in the process)...

------
tooltalk
Did the one-click feature have that much impact on Apple's e-commerce? I
thought it was their retail stores that really made difference in how the
company sold and communicated with their customers.

~~~
donarb
The App Store uses a form of one-click for buying apps, that has helped Apple
immensely.

------
jaclaz
>So he called up Amazon and said, “Hey, this is Steve Jobs,” ...

And "Amazon" replied:

"Hello, Steve, my name is Adrian, I will be happy to help you."

Seriously, it is not like he cold called "Amazon", he already knew whom to
contact exactly, had already met the relevant executive (or the CEO)
personally many times, etc., etc. , and the actual deal was probably closed
after several weeks of meetings, a formal legal review and what not.

~~~
blihp
Actually Jobs may very well have called Bezos in the moment. I wouldn't be
surprised if it was a verbal/handshake deal up front between Steve and Jeff
with any meetings/legal review involving the relevant staff to formalize and
finalize coming after they had already reached an agreement in principle.
That's often how deals get done at the executive level esp. if the parties
know each other.

~~~
jaclaz
>Actually Jobs may very well have called Bezos in the moment.

Sure, though the article literally says that Jobs "called up Amazon", not
Bezos.

Besides the (hopefully) quick laugh, what I was trying to say was that the
private/direct phone number of Jeff Bezos is unlikely to have been on a public
directory and that the (untold) before is that the two already knew each other
personally and had most probably already done business together, the telephone
call is only a tiny part of how the deal matured.

There are a lot of these articles that somehow push the concept that some
people (geniuses/leaders/etc.) made quick decisions/deals/whatever game
changing innovations on the spur of the moment and were successful at that
only because of serendipity or intuition.

While this may happen, I doubt that - even if the initial sparkle came "by
chance" and "suddenly" \- the merit of the success of this or that deal is to
be attributed to that moment alone (as opposed to the before and the after).

More like T. Edison:

Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.

~~~
DonaldPShimoda
> Sure, though the article literally says that Jobs "called up Amazon", not
> Bezos.

Just metonymy --- when we use an inanimate thing to stand in place of a person
(like "North Korea agreed to a cease-fire", which is metonymy because the
abstract concept of a country doesn't "agree to" anything).

> what I was trying to say was that the private/direct phone number of Jeff
> Bezos is unlikely to have been on a public directory

Doesn't need to be public. These high-level people (CEOs, famous musicians,
etc.) have easy ways to contact one another. They might have only met once and
exchanged numbers "just in case", or maybe the story was a shorthand way of
saying "Steve had his secretary call Bezos's secretary right then" (which is
entirely possible to do spur-of-the-moment if Apple had ever had contact with
Amazon at all). I think the spirit of the story --- that the call took a very
short time, maybe a couple minutes --- is totally reasonable.

Tim Cook told a story once that he was unsure what to do at some point with
regard to shareholders or something, so he called up Warren Buffett.
Apparently they had exchanged numbers once in the past when they had been at
some event together or something like that. It was a spur-of-the-moment call
without any phone tag, at least as Cook tells the story.

~~~
jaclaz
>Just metonymy ---

I know, but you cannot use it "asymmetrically" in a case such as this.

Apple may metonymically call Amazon, but if the call (and the deal) is
initiated by Steve Jobs, the call (and deal) is received by Jeff Bezos or by
one of his top executives.

BTW there is an evident need for symmetry also for the "merit" of the fast
decision/acceptance by the receiving party, you cannot incense the one making
the fast, direct and serendipitous proposal and then hide the one (person) on
the other side that so quickly accepted it (for 1M $) under the metonymy.

>Tim Cook told a story once that he was unsure what to do at some point with
regard to shareholders or something, so he called up Warren Buffett.

Yep, he didn't call up Berkshire Hathaway.

~~~
DonaldPShimoda
> but you cannot use it "asimmetrically" in a case such as this.

You absolutely can.

Setting: a restaurant. Steve is another employee.

"Hey, did Steve take the bill to the ham sandwich?"

This is 100% acceptable. Just because _you_ don't use it doesn't mean it's
unacceptable. For more on metonymy and examples of it, check out the book
"Metaphors We Live By". There are a few chapters devoted to real-world uses of
metonymy, and this is absolutely common among native English speakers.

Also, do you have something against using the letter y for the "kit" vowel?
I've never seen spellings like "simmetry" or "metonimy" before in any dialect.
(Honest question.)

> Yep, he didn't call up Berkshire Hathaway.

Is it so unbelievable that wealthy people might have met once and exchange
phone numbers? What use would Berkshire Hathaway be for him? He wanted advice
from Buffett directly, not some other person, nor the company as an entity.

Also, your argument doesn't make any sense anymore. Why is it that you feel
Tim Cook has to call Berkshire Hathaway (company) and not Warren Buffet
(person), but you think that Steve Jobs called Jeff Bezos (person) and not
Amazon (company)?

~~~
jaclaz
>Also, do you have something against using the letter y for the "kit" vowel?
I've never seen spellings like "simmetry" or "metonimy" before in any dialect.
(Honest question.)

Only typos, sorry, corrected.

>Is it so unbelievable that wealthy people might have met once and exchange
phone numbers? What use would Berkshire Hathaway be for him? He wanted advice
from Buffett directly, not some other person, nor the company as an entity.

Not at all unbelievable, actually very probable, I was only pointing out how
you didn't use the metonymy in your Tim Cook example.

~~~
DonaldPShimoda
> Only typos, sorry, corrected.

Oh, my mistake! I thought maybe it was like how British people spell things
differently from Americans, and maybe this was another thing along those
lines. Apologies.

> I was only pointing out how you didn't use the metonymy in your Tim Cook
> example.

Oh I totally misread that. Apologies again.

Metonymy is not compulsory in any case, but it does serves a specific purpose
when it's used. Metonymy is used to draw attention to a person's (or maybe
group of people's) identity through an inanimate object. You might talk about
the "first violin" in an orchestral setting, but "Jane" (the violinist) when
talking about her dreams and aspirations in school. It's just used depending
on context and desired mental imagery.

In the Steve Jobs case, it was Amazon that held the one-click purchase patent,
so it makes sense that he would call Amazon. Additionally, it may not even
have been Bezos he needed to talk to. Maybe it was some other executive or
something. The fact that it might have been Bezos is not the important thing,
so metonymy is used to say "Steve wanted to acquire this specific thing from
Another Company".

In contrast, Tim Cook called Warren Buffett specifically because of his skills
as an individual. Calling Berkshire Hathaway wouldn't have made sense because
the company doesn't have that knowledge. If Cook had wanted to hire
consultation, then he might have called Berkshire Hathaway, but as it was he
was talking to a specific individual for personal financial advice.

~~~
jaclaz
Well, you were close enough, in Italian (my mother language) metonymy is
"metonimia" and symmetry is "simmetria", it is not uncommon when I write in
English that I wrongly use the italian spelling for words that are very
similar.

Anyway, back to the Steve Jobs case, remember that he wanted not only to talk
to the entity that held the patent, he also wanted to make a 1 million $
proposal for acquiring the license _and_ wanted an immediate reply, so he
needed to talk to someone with enough power to accept the proposal _and_ to
accept it _immediately_ , so that would be very specifically be either Jeff
Bezos or a top Amazon executive with those powers (and the guts to close such
a deal directly on the phone without telling the boss), there is no contrast
with Tim Cook wanting to talk specifically with Warren Buffet.

------
bradhe
Makes me think...which of his decisions DIDN’T play out quite this way?

------
Spooky23
Is this sort of thing still possible in a public companies with Sabarnes
Oxley?

~~~
MBCook
Isn’t this basically how Zuckerberg bought Instagram? He decided to, called up
with a BIG offer, and got it done at lightning speed?

~~~
duxup
Yeah the story went that he met with the folks at Instagram and there was a
discussion that if Instagram joined Facebook it would be worth X% of
Facebook... so they used that number.

