The business of trademarks is a serious one, usually at least. But a Russian entrepreneur seems intent on changing all that by trademarking the wink emoticon, used by everyone and their grandma since the dawn of time (the invention of the computer). Maybe this whole story needs a ;-) at the end.

Trademarks can include business names, logos, phrases, symbols, and a lot more. But they can only be granted to identify the commercial source or origin of a product or service. Which makes the news that the wink emoticon, used by generation after generation for the last couple of decades, has been registered as a trademark laughable.

Emoticons are simply symbols used in text based speech to convey an emotion, hence an emotional icon. They are made by combining symbols and letters together to form what is usually a face showing different kinds of emotions.

There is anecdotal evidence of emoticons having been around since the nineteenth century but Scott Fahlman takes the honor as the man credited with the now common use of emoticons. He suggested the use of :-) and :-( on a Carnegie Mellon University message board back in 1982. The craze caught on and millions of Web and mobile phone users now emote in messages every day.

But now, according to SFGate, Oleg Teterin, president of Superfone, a Russian mobile phone advertising company, has trademarked the wink emoticon. Quite why he didn’t trademark the smiley or frowny emoticon while he was at it isn’t clear. Teterin said:

I want to highlight that this is only directed at corporations, companies that are trying to make a profit without the permission of the trademark holder.

Legal use will be possible after buying an annual license from us. It won’t cost that much — tens of thousands of dollars.

Well that’s OK then, so long as it’s only corporations and not individuals you’re going to chase and demand money from, then I’m fine with it. But could you not going after individuals have anything to do with the fact that millions of people around the globe use it on a daily basis and you have no chance of catching them all?

Even corporations are likely to tell Teterin to go back to the rock he crawled out from, followed by a wink of course. The chance of any court in the world backing this trademark claim in almost nil.

The symbol has been in the public domain for years and will no doubt continue to be used for many years to come. Which sheds some doubt over the trademark’s basis in law. Add to that the fact that a Russian court has already dismissed another man’s claims to holding the wink emoticon trademark and Teterin looks to be down and out.

;-)

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Entry was posted on Thursday, December 11th, 2008 at 11:34 pm under Legal, Opinion.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
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