AOL bent on taking AIM

[BigBlueBall News]

ZDNet News

June 21, 2001

Emboldened by the recent court victory giving it the rights to several Aimster-related domain names, AOL Time Warner tells the creator of an IM project his work is unauthorized.



On the heels of winning the rights to several Aimster-related domain names, AOL Time Warner has notified the creator of a fledgling instant messaging project that his work is unauthorized and may violate company trademarks.



In a posting on the Sourceforge.net site, Douglas E. Warner said he received a letter from an attorney representing AOL, who asked him to stop using the letters "AIM" to describe his phpAIM project. PhpAIM is an interface to AOL Instant Messenger written in the open-source PHP language.



Trademark holders often send out dozens, if not hundreds, of letters to a wide variety of people they feel are violating their trademarks--parties ranging from journalists, to competitors, to inventors--in the hopes of getting them to stop using a particular word.



AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein would not say how many letters AOL has issued relating to its AIM trademark, but he said the action against Warner was not unusual. "We regularly take action to protect our trademarks and intellectual property," he said.



In addition to asserting trademark claims, the AOL letter warned Warner that he was not authorized to distribute an AIM-compatible product. [Discuss]

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/zd/20010621/tc/aol_bent_on_taking_aim__1.html