Patently unfair

"The solution, to which Amazon now holds the exclusive right in Europe for the next 20 years, is for Amazon to send the recipient an email asking for their address. That's it. The patent is not for the code, the look and feel of the site, or the work needed to integrate Amazon's databases and email servers, all of which are automatically covered by copyright. Rather, it covers the idea, the abstract solution to the problem of not knowing someone's address when you've been commissioned to send them something. They have the exclusive right to send an email to the recipient to ask them, and anyone wanting to build a system to do that must pay Amazon for the privilege. "