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

Re:Provocation

[iammani]

No you are not ;-)

Re:Its a PR Stunt, not about trademark

[Vornzog]

Maybe he's, William Shatner?

I'm afraid you ALL owe me ton of money...

[HexaByte]

You see, I've just found an idiot in the Trademark Office that let me trademark a,e,i,o,u, and y when used to represent a vowel sound.

So, unless you all want to get sued, you need to send me 2 cents (US) for each 1 thousand vowels used.

It's not too expensive, and if you are a book or newspaper publisher, I offer volume discounts!