A Nightmare on Aim Street?

Take a moment to contemplate a nightmare. Imagine that Vodafone managed to patent text messaging. Now imagine that it took the other networks to court to stop them offering the service to their own customers.

What do you think would happen if Vodafone won? I'm guessing that either the networks would defy the ruling and risk massive fines, or they'd terminate the service and risk a mass subscriber exodus.

Now imagine that someone really has managed to patent something as vital to many people's everyday communication.

Well, imagine no more because it's happened. AOL, after almost six years, has finally secured a patent for instant messaging (IM).

As reported on Silicon.com, AOL now has a legitimate claim over the rights to "anything resembling a network that lets multiple IM users see when other people are present and then communicate with them".

Sounds rather like MSN Messenger to me - and Yahoo Messenger, and Jabber, and Trillian, and a host of other services, perhaps stretching back as far as certain aspects of Internet Relay Chat, which predated IM by many years.

Of course, AOL isn't acting on this - yet. But it does mean that the company has a trump card in its back pocket, ready to be whipped out if and when Microsoft, or any of the other IM providers, threaten the dominance of AOL Instant Messenger.

Or maybe it sees the ruling as a hook on which to hang a lucrative licensing agreement with Microsoft over the closer integration of a key component of Windows.

Microsoft Messenger is already a major part of the Windows team's support arsenal, allowing Microsoft engineers to take control of your system, should you allow them, and fix problems remotely.

It's my guess that we're likely to see this net-based approach to problem solving used more and more in the future.

It's only natural that AOL should try and protect its interest in messaging technology and it should be applauded for not acting on the patent immediately.

But if it uses this ruling as a launch pad for making the technology an open standard it would win devoted followers worldwide.

AOL is, in many ways, an unfortunate company. Born in 1985, it was one of the pioneers of mass-market internet access and as such has built itself a substantial subscriber base - a good thing.

However, it is targeted very much at the novice user; often the kind of person who thinks that forwarding a chain-letter email doesn't amount to spamming.

It got to the point several years ago where some users were blocking the AOL domain - in its entirety - from sending them mail, and many have yet to clear the 'block' checkbox.

But AOL, like Hotmail and a host of other email services, is home not merely to the perpetrators of spam, but the victims. Anyone who has an AOL mailbox - and I'm one of them - will know how quickly a screen name just a few days old can attract spam.

Because it's home to 35 million users worldwide the spammers know that pretty much any combination of letters suffixed by @aol.com will be a direct hit.

Apart from being an annoyance to its users, accepting such a heavy mail load, and removing it once its members click 'delete', costs money. It saps bandwidth and means the company must maintain enormous drive pools to store the data.

But AOL is based in Virginia, where forward-thinking legislators have passed a law that makes it possible to sue for damages to cover these kind of costs.

After a battle that has lasted almost as long as its campaign for the IM patent, AOL has successfully sued CN Productions, accused of sending almost a billion messages to AOL users, for almost $7m (£4.3m).

In fairness it was forced to pursue the action to show that its policy on spam had teeth.

As AOL clearly states, it "does not authorise the use of its proprietary computers and computer network ... to accept, transmit or distribute unsolicited bulk email sent from the internet to AOL members. AOL reserves the right to take all legal and technical steps available to prevent unsolicited bulk email."

In watching its own back, though, AOL may have done a service to us all.

Admittedly it was fortunate that the state in which the rambling and far-reaching amendment to the Virginia Computer Crimes Act was enacted is the same as that in which AOL is based, but now that providers worldwide have seen it work they should be encouraged to lobby for the introduction of similar laws.

Although spammers claim that you can easily make $10,000 a month, fire your boss, work from home and sit back and watch the $$$ roll in, none but a tiny minority make enough to live on.

The threat of a $7m penalty, though, should do more than the likes of Mailwasher, or Hotmail's integrated anti-spam measure, to keep your inbox free of junk.

These developments may not turn out to be a nightmare after all, as the messaging patent and the successful outcome of its spam case are great news for AOL.

They will help create a more spam-free world, and probably increase its subscriber base.

AOL's problem now will be where to put all the newcomers. With so many millions already onboard, and with the massive uptake of AOL Instant Messenger, screen names are running out fast.