Russian Hopes To Cash In On Emoticons 213
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).
"Entrepreneur"? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Fine with me (Score:4, Interesting)
Not so fast (Score:3, Interesting)
The rademark institution said that the smiley is an integral part of the "Superfone" logo, is not a trademark in and of itself, and is in fact incapable of being one.
Sorry to ruin everybody's party, but here [lenta.ru] is a source for those who can read Russian or are awesome enough for Babelfish.