America Online Inc. has decided not to fully support Microsoft's Sender ID spam-fighting plan citing intellectual property concerns from the Internet Engineering Task Force and the open-source community.

U.S. District Court Judge Charles Wolle awarded what is believed to be the largest spam judgment ever to Robert Kramer, an ISP owner who had accused three companies of sending his 5, 000 customers millions of pieces of spam in 2003.

Spam reports from America Online members dropped from a daily average of almost 11 million in November 2003 to a daily average of about 2.2 million last month, the company said this week.