Here's an interesting post from 2002:

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.elvis.king/browse_thread/thread/44638dfeb010f2c9?q=smiley

That is all.

I want to trademark *rofl* so I can sue the Price Money out of L33t-gamers.

Is it just me or does the law get more obscure every day?

http://www.russiatoday.com/features/news/34577

"Russia’s patent authority, Rospatent, has ruled that the smiley graphic cannot be registered as a trademark."

Surely to trademark something you have to actually prove that you own it in some way - Either you developed it yourself or you paid someone to develop it for your company?

It's like me trying to trademark the symbol '&' and demanding royalties from anyone that uses it!

Incidentally I think he might find that he is counter-sued by LG as 'his' emoticon looks an awful lot like their already trademarked logo:

http://www.pclaunches.com/entry_images/0807/24/lg-logo.jpg

That would be a fun lawsuit!

;-)

Assuming that most business are such a happy place that they even use emoticons much, how does he plan on monitoring/enforcing this?

Back in the day, IBM managed to trademark /2 as part of the PS/2 launch--.

;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-)

sue me :P

Consider that the Royal Mail reckon to have a trademark on the colour red for instance.

Having a trademark and being able to enforce it are two separate issues though - trademarks are only valid within a specific area or domain. Even then I can use the trademark in a relevant context without permission - I don't need to pay Microsoft royalties for using their name in this sentence for example.

So, let him waste his money if he wants to. It'll serve as some punishment for being such a stupid, money-grabbing imbecile in the first place.

As I've trademarked 'Russia', 'Russian', 'Russian businessman' and 'owner of an emoticon' as trademarks and I'm going to sue his ass off.

I'm not a trademark expert, but I don't see why he shouldn't use ;-) as a trademark. Of course, he'd have to decide what category or categories of goods or services he wants to register it for. Then he could complain if someone else uses the mark to describe their own goods or services in the same category or categories.

There are dozens of registered trademarks consisting of just the word "SMILE". Go and look at www.ipo.gov.uk, if you don't believe me.

As far as I know (IANAL) you trademark the typeface and so-on as well - the whole logo.

So we just need to know which font he used in his trademark application (comic sans MS, probably), and pick another one...

They have registered their trademark which contained their logo with the smiley in it. They were not allowed to register the smiley alone. So, it's a non-issue.

Trademarks don't work like that. "Prior Art" is not generally an issue; it's not like a patent.

You can trademark most things, including most common sayings or words, as long as nobody else has already registered the mark.

You also, generally, have to restrict a trademark to a particular area of business; straying from this results in the problems with the Apple trademark

You know what, the minute people may have to pay they will stop using it, invent a new one or more likely not give a monkey's, and you will look a bigger nob than you already do!

Bullshit!

Research before you post a report. Oleg Teterin's request for trademarking was refused by the Russian patent offce with the reason that regular symbols can't be trademarked. In Germany the Deutsche Telekom tried similar with their signature magenta letter T and failed.

My company Elithio Ideas inc. has trademarked the simple dot - as in the one under the vertical line at the end of this sentence!

Our lawyers estimate that you lot who have posted comments already owe us £100,000 (or €20) apiece. (And that's just for the full stops. We're letting you off the ones over the i as a goodwill gesture.)

As for El Reg itself, a look at past pages shows that it owes several multiples of the national debt, and the bailiffs will be around on Monday to collect Sarah B (or 'The Moderatrix') in part-payment.

I hope so.

... that a ;-) smiley could be considered a unique way of representing his business?

Is Trademark Whoring a business?

"Surely to trademark something you have to actually prove that you own it in some way - Either you developed it yourself or you paid someone to develop it for your company?"

Nope. Trademark is not a patent, it is just claiming use of a particular logo or symbol for your particular line of business (plus trying to deny use of "confusingly similar" logos and names.)

"I thought you couldn't trademark something that is in common use within a certain context. The smilie already existed, so he can't copyright it."

That's right, except they were claiming trademark, not copyright. And apparently, per a few posts above (the post by Christoph), the Russian trademark agency agreed, the trademark was denied.

To avoid confusion...

Patents cover inventions*, trademark covers logos and names, and copyright covers copying creative products**. Coca Cola for instance -- if I tried to clone Coca Cola, if the formula is patented they could try suing for patent infringement if my copy was close enough (really they couldn't, any patent would have expired over 75 years ago, but...) If I called mine Coca Cola, they could get me for trademark infringement, or if I used like a similar logo but called it Coka Cola or something. It's supposed to be based on the logo or name being similar enough to cause confusion. Copyright? Wouldn't apply as much (since it's more for books, music, movies, software, etc.), but if I copied the non-logo graphics for my bottles, they wouldn't be covered by trademark but would be copyrighted.

*Patents cover inventions, plus whatever other crap the local patent office allows people to slip by... in the US for instance, they allow software patents (ugh), they allowed business method patents until recently (ugh!!), and I think may still allow genetic patents (ughhhh!!!!!).

**Creative products -- so copyright isn't supposed to apply to just data collections. But, despite this there've been copyright cases here in the US about copying data (in bulk) from phone books and Westlaw, they do both assert copyright even though by strict interpretation it's just a collection of phone numbers and legal cases. It's legally clear cut, but in actual cases, they'll be like "collecting all that info is a lot of work", and some judges (contrary to the letter of the law) decide it's copyrighted.

Trademarks aren't patents. He would only be able to sue people for passing-off, not just using the letters in normal communications otherwise trademarks like Orange, Apple, Sun etc couldn't be used which would be stupid. And if the item is generic in it's context it can't be trademarked.

I think he got stung by a lawyer looking for a mug who doesn't understand the difference.

if you drink cheap wodka ... you either go blind or become braindead.

Winker in chief? Winker? More like W%^@

no carrier

Just yesterday someone alerted ElReg to the fact that you had reprinted a viral while passing it off as a story. Now you are doing it again. What does a lawsuit cost for - insert name of company - compared to the free press you have just delivered for a barely funny story ? Yet some other interesting ElReg story has just disappeared.

Please, some other El Regian please slapdown this 'author' for brining you all into disrepute.

I can just imagine Rogers & Hammerstein trademarking/copyrighting do, re, mi from the Sound of Music... The songs are one thing, the concept of using do, re, mi for the musical scale is another. After all, it was already in common use before the song was written. Ditto, all the emoticons have been in use since the 70's or earlier. I have a very old list of them all from the late 70's (a couple of text pages w/ icons and definitions) from someone who was a Multics user. Too bad they didn't copyright them at the time... ;-) ;-)

(_!_)

especially that little dot at the bottom of the a5$crack which is what he is