Watch how hard the man tries to make his 'invention' sound like a complicated idea (link).
The video relates to a very recent case and it was only made available a week ago. It should hopefully illustrate the obviousness of patents that get accepted nowadays, be them software-related or not.
So far we've been spared (our network has not been targeted at all) [...] Let's hope the spam won't discourage the hundreds of thousands of people worldwide who still use IRC