AOL May Strike Gold with IM Patent
 

Media giant AOL Time Warner has quietly won a U.S. patent for instant messaging, a potential goldmine as the online activity rivals mobile phone text-messaging as the most popular new communication tool.

For more information, visit The Washington Post

I wonder if their patent could potentially effect irc...

" multiplicity of communications terminals which are connectable to said communications network and which can be employed concurrently by multiple seeking users and multiple sought users to communicate via said communications network, wherein each user is identified independently of a given communications terminal address by a unique identification code predefined for said user, which code is independent of which of said multiplicity of communications terminals that user is employing...."


Man, how can anyone make sense of this. :P