Emoticons? Patented! :(
from the :( dept
Exactly five years ago, Despair Inc. (makers of the lovely calendars that have hung in my office every year since 1999) was able to trademark :-( and immediately announced (jokingly) that they were going to sue just about everyone who used it. Amusingly, not everyone got the joke leading to outrage directed at the company. Well, in the latest case of intellectual property protection around the ever popular :), Cellular News is claiming in a headline that Cingular Patents the Emoticon :(. So, that would imply that :-( is now both trademarked and patented. It's text, so, hell, maybe someone should try to copyright it also. Looking at the details of the story suggest that it's not quite as bad as the headline suggests -- but still amazingly ridiculous. The article doesn't link to the patent, but a quick search turns up a newly issued patent on a Method for sending multi-media messages using emoticons, assigned to AT&T (not Cingular). I should mention, by the way, that there are a stunning number of patents involving emoticons -- and you have to believe that, unlike in the Despair case, none of these patent holders filed these jokingly. What this particular patent covers is the ability to use animated emoticons in mobile messaging, rather than just the text variety. So, you're fine if you still use your standard :) as you text your friends. However, even so, how in the world could this possibly deserve patent protection? Animated smileys are common just about everywhere, and not because of some brilliant "invention" that deserves protection, but because it's an obvious idea. Why should anyone deserve to get a patent on this same idea, just because it's on a mobile phone instead of a computer? What sort of patent examiner allows patents like this to be approved... and how does this possibly encourage innovation? Update: The folks from Cellular News have stopped by to point out that the actual patent is a different one from the one we're discussing. It is from Cingular and is a bit different. However, the good news is that it's just a patent application, as opposed to a full patent. The patent in this case covers adding a button to the screen of a mobile phone to let you choose which emoticon you'd like. Again, not as broad as completely patenting emoticons, but still pretty ridiculous. Hopefully the patent examiners realize this in time. The original patent we discussed, however, still never should have been granted.
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'_'
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PATENTS
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about time...
they're about 10 times more annoying than the text versions.
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No More Ad-Bars!
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Re: No More Ad-Bars!
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^,^ Konichiwa Lawyer San n_n`
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Re: ^,^ Konichiwa Lawyer San n_n`
It is actually, US2006015812 which is more wide ranging that the AT&T patent cited above.
http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=US2006015812&F=0
Cheers ;)
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the oblivious obvious...
- the way I see it, anything like smileys should fall under an open source type area. Freely, used and modified. Worse case senario, I will create my own versions of smileys... (-:
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Just like "your fired" never shoulda been patented
My point is, if its already used by more than half of a population (the internet namely, or employers firing their employees) as a phrase or in the case of the article, emoticons, theres no way in hell it should have ever been allowed. People were using emoticons LONG before crappy Cingular came along, just like employers have been saying "your fired" way before Donald Trump decided he didnt have enough money from his massive hotel empire and decided he needed some pocket change from a crappy tv show. How the hell can you possibly claim its an original invention worthy of a patent when its not original and it was being used before your company was even founded???
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No Subject Given
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crazyness
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Patents only destory inovation.
Tell me how would this work with no one to compete against, they can then sit back and watch the money role in as no one would be alowed to create a product like theirs.
It's competition thats creates inovatio, not patent :( (ooh noeezz, i'mma gonna be sueedz!!1 I used da sad face smileyy)
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Why fight them, join them...
How about this, I'll have a "premium" service for using the ASCII characters in sequence (words) or if to use the extended character set.
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WHAT THE HELL
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Re: ^,^ Konichiwa Lawyer San n_n`
> patent number in question onto the news article.
> It is actually, US2006015812
And that isn't a patent - it is merely a published patent application. All of the outrage about how could any examiner allow such a patent is a bit premature - all it is, is an attempt to patent something. The application has not even been seen by an examiner yet.
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Headline Crappola
This is much ado about nothing and the headline clearly misrepresents the facts.
Aren't there enough marketing nonsense in the world without Tech Dirt adding to it?
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Re: ^,^ Konichiwa Lawyer San n_n`
I think the U.S. patent rules and legislation need to be reformed. Just my $.02 and I'm giving it out for free.
John
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Re: Headline Crappola
"Patient irregularities regarding use of emoticons in multimedia"
doesn't exactly scream "read me" "read me"!
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Re: No More Ad-Bars!
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Re: ^,^ Konichiwa Lawyer San n_n`
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Re: ^,^ Konichiwa Lawyer San n_n`
Patent application numbers have 11 digits in them and this number US2006015812 has only 10. So is this story true, or did somebody forget a digit or something.
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hhhmmmm
Let me think. Oh! I know! I'm going to patent sidewalks! I'm going to be rich!
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No Subject Given
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go read the patent
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Re: go read the patent
A method and system for generating a displayable icon or emoticon form that indicates the mood or emotion of a user of the mobile station. A user of a device, such as a mobile phone, is provided with a dedicated key or shared dedicated key option that the user may select to insert an emoticon onto a display or other medium. The selection of the key or shared dedicated key may result in the insertion of the emoticon, or may also result in the display of a collection of emoticons that the user may then select from using, for example, a key mapping or navigation technique.
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Re: No Subject Given
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lets patent language. in fact, lets just patent th
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No Subject Given
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Re: lets patent language. in fact, lets just paten
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Re: No Subject Given
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Re: No More Ad-Bars!
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Re: No Subject Given
here here ...
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Re: No Subject Given
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Re: No Subject Given
Don't hold your breath waiting for the checks to roll in...
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:: get real here guys!
Vote with your hard cash; don't support Despair - why should you then? In fact any company you disagree with - vote for their competition - and actively support them. People don't realise how powerful they really are - companies need you more than what they need you. Kick their asses when they need a kicking!
:)
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Re: lets patent language. in fact, lets just paten
No recently created artwork is public domain.
Copyright is automatically granted to the creator of any artistic work for a period of no less than 70 years. Registration is not required although it is encouraged. Smileys are no exception.
You may think it's very easy and trivial to create an animated emoticon but I only know of a handful of people who really have the required talent. Unfortunately, there are many more people who think like you do and much of our time is spent fighting these leeches who toss up a website full of our content and proclaim it's all free for the grabbing.
Ever tried to enforce a DMCA action on some german kid with a copy of httrack, a bad attitude, and an uncaring webhost? Copyrights are absolutely neccesary and so is enforcement of them.
So you don't like smileys, don't look at them!
But if you're going to jump into a discussion about them, at least get a grip on some of the facts first.
No one I know want's to patent anything. They just want a little respect for their time and effort. I don't think that's too much to ask given that an average work day might be 16 hours or more with an expected return of only a few cents from a google ad.
I do agree with some of you about the "emoticons" shown at the bottom of yahoo mails and stuff.
We have nothing to do with that type of emoticon or promotion. Those are generally employed by LLC's and other scam sites to lure users into mailing lists.
We simply attempt to provide a little extra amusement for users of forums. I guarantee you there is very little profit in this. The only one who ever really profits from our work is google ;)
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emoticons and Domain Art
http://goal-l.com
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