[Discussioni] Newsscan

[Francesco Potorti`]

AOL PATENTS INSTANT MESSAGING TECHNOLOGY
AOL Time Warner has quietly won a U.S. patent for its ICQ instant messaging
technology, representing a potential goldmine for the media giant. The
broadly worded patent defines AOL's IM application as one that enables users
to chat with and identify one another across a specific "communications
network," opening up the possibility for AOL to collect royalties from
rivals. ICQ, which was developed in the mid-1990s by a group of Israeli
scientists at a company called Mirabilis, was the first breakthrough chat
application. It filed a patent for its technology in 1997 and was acquired
by AOL in 1998 for $287 million. (Reuters 19 Dec 2002)
http://shorl.com/bakystimytragre