Microsoft wants to patent emoticons

[Delerious]

Looks like MS wants to patent the smiley face.

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnet...DN/20050156873


It's a long url. Go to USPTO and search for application number 20050156873


J

[thecoalman]

I've seen a site where the smilies were labled as copyrighted which makes sense because it was an original work. I can't seem to find it now. I think it was one of the first to publish them..... Patented though? MS is out of their minds.

[TheUnknownComic]

More exactly, it sounds like a patent for some method of creating and transmitting emoticons rather than the emoticons themselves. The patent was filed 18 months ago. I wonder if it's being used in some software already.

[thecoalman]

Sounds more along the lines of Amazon's absurd one click patent on shopping......

[ebenton]

They also want to patent the number one and the number zero.

http://home.att.net/~jbcole/humor/Microsoft_patents.htm

[Bullworth]

This trend of patent trolling has been going on for a while now and it seems like there's no end in sight. Someone only has to claim that someone else's hardware/software uses an obscure and miniscule amount of their patent in their product and then watch the money come in.
OK, that's overly simplified but it's the general principle for alot of these claims.

[Nilfennasion]

This, unfortunately, is a side-effect of a culture where everything has to be owned, serialised, catalogued, and so forth.

Given that Emoticons have basically been in the public domain for over a decade, and that any idiot with a paint program can make their own set, the likelihood of patenting or copyrighting emotions unless they have a specific theme (Buffy-esque, just for example) seems low. *shrug*