A lawsuit was launched against AOL and its subsidiary The Huffington Post that seeks $100 million in damages.

The class action suit launched with the Manhattan federal court claims that The Huffington Post unfairly pocketed more than $100 million from its unpaid bloggers when AOL Inc bought the influential news website in February.

Two months earlier Arianna Huffington, co-founder of the website, sold the media site to AOL for $315 million. The lawsuit alleges, of that price, at least $105 million was the estimated value of the website's unpaid writings, which should now be given to the bloggers.

"The Huffington Post is nothing without the bloggers who created the content," said Jonathan Tasini, a one-time Huffington Post blogger who filed the suit and is seeking class-action status on behalf of the bloggers.

The website content was made partially by opinions and partially by news. But to some extend it also relied on free contributions by celebrities, politicians and experts to drive traffic, turning it into a major online force since it started in 2005.

A spokesman for the website said he had not reviewed the lawsuit, but called the allegations "completely baseless."

It is uncertain to what extent the website's sale value or estimated revenue was based on unpaid blogs but the class action suit claims that the roughly 9,000 unpaid bloggers should receive their fair cut.

The lawsuit also called for the website to release detailed information on the Internet traffic to and from the blogs.