[IM-patents] iKimbo patents process of inviting people to join "communities" of discussion/interaction

[Bob Wyman]

    iKimbo (www.ikimbo.com) today received a patent on a method for
inviting people to join "communities" which include chat or instant
messaging systems. The method covers the process of creating a
"community" which is composed of various messaing and data sharing
services and inviting people to join that community (e.g. by sending an
email message). The claims seem to restrict the scope to only those
invitations that contain an executable component. However, it would seem
that even just a little bit of javascript would be enough for an
invitation to join a chat session to infringe on this patent. 
    Users of Groove will be familiar with the idea of "inviting" someone
to join a "community" of discussion. Quite a variety of other systems
have implemented similar capabilities in the past, (eMeetings,
invitations to Yahoo Groups, etc.) however, for obvious reasons, none of
these are cited as prior art. iKimbo is clearly looking for a hunting
license. Licensing fees will undoubtedly be lower than the cost of
invalidating this bad patent.
    This patent is another example of why we all should be watching more
carefully the applications that are published every Thursday and
providing prior art to the PTO to stop these bad patents from being
issued.
 
h <http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?patentnumber=6519629>
ttp://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?patentnumber=6519629
United States Patent  6,519,629  iKimbo,  February 11, 2003  
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System for creating a community for users with common interests to
interact in 
Abstract
An Information and Application Distribution System (IADS) is disclosed.
The IADS operates, in one embodiment, to distribute, initiate and allow
interaction and communication within like-minded communities.
Application distribution occurs through the transmission and receipt of
an "invitation application" which contains both a message component and
an executable component to enable multiple users to connect within a
specific community. The application object includes functionality which
allows the user's local computer to automatically set up a user
interface to connect with a central controller which facilitates
interaction and introduction between and among users. 


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