page_title: Emoticon
section_title: Emoticons and intellectual property rights
hierarchical_section_title: Emoticon / Emoticons and intellectual property rights
caption_attribution_description: English: Image from US patent 6987991
context_page_description: An emoticon is a written symbol, often as 2 or 3 punctuation characters, that stands for the writer's mood or facial expression. Some examples are: a smile ":-" or wink ";-" or frown ":see many other examples in text below). Emoticons are often used to tell a reader about the general tone of a statement, and can change or improve the reading of plain writing. Over the years, many kinds of emoticons have been created, and now there are hundreds of known emoticons. The word "emoticon" is a blend of the English words emotion (or emote) and icon. In web forums, instant messengers and online games, text emoticons are often automatically replaced with small pictures, which came to be called emoticons as well. Certain complex character combinations can only be accomplished in a double-byte language, giving rise to very complex forms, sometimes known by their romanized Japanese name of kaomoji.
  The use of emoticons can be traced back to the 19th century, and they were commonly used in casual or humorous writing. In 1912, a smiling mouth (or snigger point) was shown in typewriter text as "\___/!". Digital forms of emoticons on the Internet were written in an email during 1982.
context_section_description: In 2000 Despair, Inc. obtained a U.S. trademark registration for the "frowny" emoticon :-( when used on "greeting cards, posters and art prints." In 2001, they issued a satirical press release, announcing that they would sue Internet users who typed the frowny; the joke backfired and the company received a storm of protest when its mock release was posted at technology news website Slashdot.  They subsequently issued another press release a month later in response to the reaction their claim had generated.
  A number of patent applications have been filed on inventions that assist in communicating with emoticons.  A few of these have issued as US patents. U.S. patent 6987991, for example, discloses a method developed in 2001 to send emoticons over a cell phone using a drop down menu.  The stated advantage over the prior art was that the user saved on the number of keystrokes though this may not address the obviousness criteria.
  In Finland, the emoticons :-), =), =(, :) and :( were trademarked in 2006 for use with various products and services. The emoticon :-) was also filed in 2006 and registered in 2008 as a European Community Trademark (CTM).
  In 2008, Russian entrepreneur Oleg Teterin claimed to have been granted the trademark on the ;-) emoticon. A license would not "cost that much - tens of thousands of dollars" for companies, but would be free of charge for individuals.
  In 2010 in the United Kingdom, the British chocolate company Meltwater Chocolate filed a trademark application for a series of two marks :D and :-D in class 30, covering chocolate and confectionery.
caption: Patented drop down menu for composing phone mail text message with emoticons (U.S. patent 6987991).
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