Associated Press (December 11, 2008)
"MOSCOW (AP) — How much would you pay for a ;-)? A Russian businessman has trademarked the emoticon — or combination of punctuation marks — used to convey a wink in text messages and e-mail.
"Oleg Teterin, president of the mobile ad company Superfone, said Thursday he doesn't plan on tracking down individual users following the decision by the federal patent agency.
" '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," he said in comments to NTV...."
I am Not Making This Up
The idea of trademarking a series of punctuation marks that's been in common global use for years is - in my opinion - crazy. But, not without precedent.- Four years ago, the W Hotel chain went after companies that made T-shirts, baseball caps, whatever, with a big "W" on them. There was a presidential election on, and George W. Bush's nickname, sort of, was "W." W Hotels almost had a point: Their attorneys said that using a W like that was " 'eroding the unique brand identity developed in the W logo.' "
- And, there's the case of the original Smiley Face. It looks like Harvey Ball made the first one, back in 1963. The Worcester Mutual Insurance Company paid him $45 for it. Neither of them applied for copyright, and WMIC wouldn't have tried to trademark it: they wanted Smiley for internal morale-boosting. (Wikipedia has a pretty good, and apparently accurate, page about Smiley and smileys.)
I said "more reasonably," not "reasonably." I still think the idea of making :-) or :) a trademark is nuts. If Teterin makes his claim stick, it'll be wonderfully profitable, or stifle corporate imaginations, or both. But I still think it's nuts.
Maybe I'm Missing Something Here
If the president of Russia's mobile ad company Superfone can cash in on emoticons that have been in common use around the world for years: maybe I can, too.I looked it up: the three most commonly used letters in the English language are E, A, and R. (Not the whole English language, actually. Just the words in the "Concise Oxford Dictionary.")
Maybe I should follow Mr. Teterin's example, and trademark those letters. Then, I could demand, say, $10,000 from every business that uses those letters. I'd make a fortune from eye, ear, nose, and throat specialists alone.
Will Mr. Teterin's Gambit Work?
I have no idea whether this bit of loco entrepreneurialism will make it through the courts. Russian courts, I take it.This could be interesting. Turns out, there's a bit of a line forming, of people who really invented :-) . According to the AP article, one of them's an unnamed Russian man, who also said he had the trademark to :-), and an American - Scott Fahlman - says he created :-) .
5 comments:
This is an example of desperate times calling for desperate measures in my opinion. The fact that some one is trying to make money from punctuation marks is absolutely absurd. If you are going patent something from one of the tools used by writers you had best be patenting a body of words. In my opinion trying to patent punctuation marks is like trying to patent the English language...what's next? Are we going to have to pay to use everyday words like hello and goodbye? Just my two cents.
_o%o~~_ I was searching the web for a "real" (not little tiny images, but typewriter characters--i'm an old guy, what can I say) emoticon of a motorcycle--cuz i'd forgotten how to make it--the above is how I sort of remember it, but, eenh, doesn't seem to captcha it.
On similar note, I keep telling my telephone company that I only need to rent the digits 7, 9 and 1 from them, because I carefully limit my circle of friends, businesses, etc., to outfits that use ONLY those digits in their phone #s.
Some CSRs will engage in this discussion for a bit, and when they express puzzlement at the request, I roll out my gentle rant:
Hey, you've already unbundled, and put a charge on, the wire from the nearest telephone pole to the house/apartment, the box outside the house, the wire into the house, the box inside the house, the wire from the box inside the house to the phone, the phone body, the wire from the phone body to the hand-set, and the hand-set, why not break out and charge a separate rate for each dual-tone generated by the keypad?
If I could, I'd use the combined hum and whistle that some artists use for a non-bionic human "blue box," but I don't have perfect pitch--and coordinating the whistle-hum thing, keeping control of pitch in both, is something I'd have to go to Tibet to learn and practice for many, many years.
fwiw
Majik2903,
I think you hit the nail on the head with "absolutely absurd." There's little to no reason to think that even the Russian courts are taking these crackpot claims seriously.
bw,
You said it!
I'm not entirely sure what you said, but you certainly said it.
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