In the summer of 1996, three young people in Israel developed a software for instant communication using the Internet, called ICQ. Later, AOL acquired ICQ. In 1999, a number of online instant messaging software imitating ICQ emerged in China, such as the earliest Picq, Oicq, OMMO, etc. The predecessor of QQ, OICQ, was also first launched in February 1999.

By 2000, AOL sent a lawyer's letter to Tencent, stating that ICQ was a registered trademark of AOL, so any similar software using the word ICQ in its name would risk infringing AOL's trademark rights, and requested Tencent Change the name of OICQ, otherwise we will go to court. Therefore, Tencent made early self-protection changes in the OICQ2000Build0325 version, calling itself "QQ2000" from the beginning of the installation file to avoid legal conflicts with ICQ.