What the AOL IM patent really covers

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: johnl () iecc com (John R. Levine)
Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 21:59:02 -0500
To: dave () farber net
Subject: What the AOL IM patent really covers

I dug around on the PTO's web site and found that the patent in
question is number 6,449,344.  It has an amazing 202 claims, but after
reading the four independent claims and as many of the rest as I could
before my eyes glazed, it became clear that what the patent covers is
buddy lists.

In particular, it's an IM system where each user has a permanently
assigned ID independent of where he or she is signed on, there is a
central server where a user (the "seeker") can list the IDs of people
of interest (the "sought"), and the server notifies the seeker when
any of the sought users sign on or off.  The actual communication is
peer-to-peer, with some but not all of the claims saying it'd be IP
address to IP address.

The background discussion mentions IRC as prior technology, so they
are most definitely not claiming a patent on IM in general.

The application was filed on Jan 27, 1997, so the priority date would
be Jan 27, 1996.  Was anyone using an IM system with permanent user
names and a buddy list server before that?  The systems I used either
used terminal names (TOPS-10 and Unix "talk") or per-session handles
(IRC).

-- 
John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869
johnl () iecc com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner,
http://iecc.com/johnl,
Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail


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