;-) Available For Yearly License Fee Thanks To Russian Trademark
from the so-sue-me-;-) dept
Way back in 2001, Despair Inc., makers of the world's greatest calendar (I've got a bunch) trademarked the emoticon :-( and jokingly threatened to sue pretty much everyone. Some folks in the press thought they were serious, and it got into the news. It looks like someone over in Russia is trying to do the same thing... but it's not clear if he's joking. Oleg Teterin, president of some mobile advertising company, not only has received the trademark, but says that any business using it, or any similar emoticon, now needs to pay a license fee: "Legal use will be possible after buying an annual licence from us. It won't cost that much - tens of thousands of dollars." He does make clear that he's only talking about businesses using the emoticon, not consumers, but even then some people wonder if this is just a big publicity stunt. Either way, it speaks volumes about the competency of the Russian trademark agency to consider an emoticon that's already in such widespread common usage (and has been for decades) available for trademark protection.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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I'm confused...
Let's assume that we all agree that trademarks laws exist to protect the consumer from getting confused.
If a company has a unique use of a common symbol for commercial purposes; it seems to me it would not be far fetched to get that use trademarked.
I'm not sure about Russian trademark law, however I wonder what exactly is this guys use of the trademark?
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Re: I'm confused...
Clear now ?
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Re: Re: I'm confused...
I suspect this is just a typo in the techdirt article.
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Re: I'm confused...
I messed up. It was trademark. Don't know how that happened.
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;-)
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Re:
yes. the smiley was invented by Scott Fahlman at CMU. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/smiley/
Maybe he should get in on the action ;-)
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i don't think anyone outside of Russia would be too concerned about this, even if the guy were serious.
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What about if we...
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Re: What about if we...
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Re: Re: What about if we...
And before it gets said, I am also holding a patent on taking recursive jokes too far, so if anyone continues this thread you will also be hearing from my lawyer.
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Re: :-)
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Re: Re: :-)
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I do like the way that's it's difficult for a mainstream media outlet to report on this without typing ;-)... Can they sue the BBC for reporting on their trademark, I wonder?
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Re:
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Haha
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smiley emoticon origination
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