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Russian Hopes To Cash In On Emoticons

Posted by timothy on from the but-cyrillic-is-full-of-emoticons dept.

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).

6 of 213 comments (clear)

  1. Its a PR Stunt, not about trademark by MindKata · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "What lame-brain dummy would think that either :-( or ;-) are trademarkable symbols"

    The kind of person who would think of trademarking these symbols, would be a businessman who wanted to use this cheap stunt, to get a lot of publicity for his business. Its not about the trademark. Its a stunt, to generate free publicity for his business.

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    There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
    1. Re:Its a PR Stunt, not about trademark by rastilin · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There is a saying that there's no such thing as bad publicity. This is wrong. Just ask Michael Jackson or OJ Simpson.

      --
      How do you kill that which has no life?
  2. Re:"Entrepreneur"? by Sockatume · · Score: 2, Insightful

    He owns an advertising company. Whatever else he may be, entrepreneur fits as a label.

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    No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
  3. Re:Patent Office == Zoo filled with Idiots? by Chrisq · · Score: 2, Insightful

    May be true, but that's got nothing to do with trademarks.

  4. Who gives a flying f**k anyway? by quadrofolio · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Who the hell cares. As if Russians give a damn about western laws. Same goes the other way round. What a lame sod he is. Good luck enforcing your lame copyright dude. :-) Wanker

  5. Re:Other Patent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    That appears to be an error in the HTML. If you view the no where in it does it state anything about font.