Rivals keep mum on AOL patent
SeattlePI | at | by Mike
A broad patent on instant messaging granted months ago to America Online has elicited no reaction from rivals Microsoft and Yahoo! even though it seems to threaten their competing instant-messaging services. The patent application was filed in 1997 by Mirabilis, the developer of the ICQ instant-messaging service. AOL bought Mirabilis a year later.
Their apparent sanguinity may be due to many things, but one is the question of whether AOL's new patent would even stand if AOL tried to enforce it. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Zephyr and other instant-messaging systems existed long before Mirabilis applied for the patent.