Nilesh's Weblog

All the IM belongs to me

ICQ, now owned by AOL has quietly got the `broad ownership rights' to the Instant Messaging technology, says Washington Post. The IM patent issued in September says that the `invention' is a communication system which helps users communicate with each other irrespective of whether they are bound to a specific terminal or not. The system also gives each user information about the network status of other users. Now that's too diluted an argument for a patent. Actually I really shouldn't be cared about such ridiculous patents being filed in the US. They surely do not have any standing outside the US. FYI, here is an abstract of the patent »

United States Patent 6,449,344:

The present invention discloses a communication system including a communications network, a multiplicity of communications terminals which are connectable to the communications network and which can be employed by users to communicate via the communications network, the user not necessarily being identified with a given communications terminal, apparatus for monitoring whether or not a user is connected to the communications network irrespective of which of the multiplicity of communications terminals that user is employing, and apparatus for annunciating to a seeking user, currently connected to the communications network via any of the multiplicity of communications terminals, network connection status information relating to other users who are in a set of sought users, which set is definable by the seeking user, and for providing the seeking user connection address information relating to those sought users who are currently connected to the communications network.