News.com: Patent creates IM wrinkle. This software patenting insanity must stop. Note, that AOL didn’t even invent this thing. They bought it. So this all about big money big business, it has nothing to do with innovation.

“The claim is it’s a system where you have a network; you have a way to monitor who’s on the network; and if you want to talk to them you hook them up,” said Gregory Aharonian, publisher of Internet Patent News Service, a newsletter that’s critical of technology patents. “If you’re doing something like that, you’re potentially infringing.”