Russian Hopes To Cash In On Emoticons

drewmoney writes "According to a BBC article, Entrepreneur Oleg Teterin said the trademark for the ';-)' emoticon was granted to him by Russia's federal patent agency. 'Legal use will be possible after buying an annual licence from us,' he was quoted by the newspaper Kommersant as saying. 'It won't cost that much — tens of thousands of dollars,' added the businessman, who is president of Superfone, a company that sells advertising on mobile phones. The president of Russian social networking site odnoklassniki.ru, Nikita Sherman said: 'You're not likely to find any retards in Russia who'll pay Superfone for the use of emoticons.'" Teterin may have gotten the idea by catching up on some old news about Despair, Inc., which in May 2000 was awarded a US trademark on the "frowny" emoticon (Slashdot story).

Comments

Patent Office == Zoo filled with Idiots?

[theaveng]

What lame-brain dummy would think that either :-( or ;-) are trademarkable symbols??? They both originated circa 1980 and therefore are public domain.

Re:Patent Office == Zoo filled with Idiots?

[cpt kangarooski]

What lame-brain dummy would think that either :-( or ;-) are trademarkable symbols??? They both originated circa 1980 and therefore are public domain.

I'm not sure what that has to do with anything. Perhaps Russian trademark law is different, but in the US, at least, it doesn't matter who creates the mark, or when it was created. What basically makes a mark protectable is that it is being used to identify goods or services so marked as originating from a particular source.

The word 'apple' has been around for hundreds of years, and wasn't coined by the two Steves but it is a trademark for computers. The name 'Levi' has been around for thousands of years, but it is a trademark for jeans.

Assuming that someone makes :-) brand something-or-others (or offers services under the :-) brand) and people recognize that the smiley is actually a mark in that context, meaning that so-marked goods or services come from a particular provider, then sure, it can work.

But it wouldn't affect other uses of it, like people talking about emotional states, any more than the APPLE mark for computers prevents people from using the word freely with regard to fruit.

This trademark is already invalidated

[Cyberax]

Rospatent has already invalidated this trademark because it's a generic image and doesn't offer Superfone any brand recognition.

Re:Patent THIS:

[Anonymous Coward]

Angry face

Re:Let me the first to say

[mcgrew]

It's not Soviet Russia any more. It's Post Soviet Russia.

In Post Soviet Russia, mcgrew corrects YOU!

The supposed use is wrong

[jgoemat]

Trademarks apply to branding products. If your use wouldn't cause brand confusion with his advertising company, 'Suprafone', then you wouldn't be infringing on the trademark anyway.