Adam writes that

AOL patents instant messenging software. [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]

After reading the article I'm kind of speachless. I can think of a fair amount of prior art that would say that ICQ wasn't the first to do something like this. How about zephyr? I was using that back at CMU in the early 90s (if not a little earlier). How about TinyMUD? IRC? Or heck, finger and talk. I remember using a talk program on the pdp11 computers back in high school and talking with people on my school's other campus. I just love how well the patent system works sometimes.