London, Dec 20: Media giant AOL Time Warner has quietly won a US patent for instant messaging, a potential goldmine as the online activity rivals mobile phone text-messaging as the most popular new communication tool. The patent, issued in September, grants AOL's instant messaging subsidiary ICQ broad ownership rights to the technology, which enables users to chat quickly and cheaply across the Internet.

The broad wording of the patent means AOL could get an important legal leg up on rivals Microsoft and Yahoo, the other players in the potentially lucrative instant messaging (IM) arena that have their own proprietary technologies.

AOL has offered little comment on the patent or whether it intends to enforce it.
"There are no plans to do anything with the patent at this time," a London spokesman for AOL's Internet division, America Online, said on Thursday. Bureau Report