Russian patent office rebuffs ad firm's attempt to patent smiley

Russia's patent authority, Rospatent, has rebuffed a mobile advertising agency's attempt to patent the poular emoticon, popularly called Smiley.

Russian mobile advertising firm, Superfone run by its president Oleg Teterin had claimed that Rospatent had granted him the trademark for smiley emoticon ;-) and that it would sue companies that do not pay for the right to use the image in advertising.

However, Rospatent has denied giving him the patent and said in a statement, "The smiley does not identify the company and cannot be used as its trademark and cannot be registered as such and their registration as a trademark could be in conflict with public interests.''

Teterin claims that his firm owns the rights to reproduce ;-) and similar symbols like :-) and :) and his firm would now licence the smiley faces to firms on a yearly basis for "several dozen thousand dollars," although he has been kind enough to allow individuals to use it free.   
 
Speaking to Russian TV channel NTV, 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 and legal use will be possible after buying an annual licence from us.''        

If he did end up owning the patent to smiley, it would have meant that from now on any business using the emoticon :-) would wind up paying a fine up to 5 million rubles (approximately $180,000) or could face the cold winter in Siberia.

The Kommersant newspaper also said quoting market players, Teterin, would be unlikely to find "fools" willing to pay for use of the image.

Many Russian internet users have reacted with - >:( and Alexander Manis, the director of a broadband internet and mobile company, told NTV that "Imagine the next wise-guy who trademarks the 33 letters of the Russian alphabet and then says anyone who uses the Russian alphabet has to send him money. It's absurd." According to internet users, Teterin is not the first person to try to trademark the ;-) emoticon in Russia and neither will he be the last, as in the past, German engineering giant, Siemens was hauled up in a Russian court by a Russian, Viktor Petrov, for using the smiley emoticon claiming he held the trademark for it.

Smiley emoticon has become an essential part of internet and cellphone users worldwide, who use animated GIF and text-based emoticon, " :-) ", which represents a classic smile with nose, ":-(", or a classic frown with a nose ":)", classic smile without nose and ":(" for a frown without a nose.

In 2006 the US, the smiley was the centre of a court battle between Wal-Mart and a French businessman who claimed that he had invented the yellow smiling face and in another court case filed by Wal-Mart, which claimed it held the trademark rights to the yellow smiley face to which a US judge disagreed and the retailer lost the case in 2008 with the judge pronouncing that Wal-Mart had no rights to the smiley face.

A professor at Carnegie University in the US, Scott Fahlman is credited to have been the inventor of the smiley emoticon in 1982, when he first used colon, dash and brackets as part of expressing his feelings on the university's electronic message board.