Cingular Patents the Emoticon?

massysett writes "Mobile phone carrier Cingular Wireless may have managed to get a patent on the emoticon. The patent describes a system for selecting a displayable icon to indicate the mood or emotion of the user. It also covers text-based emoticons, 'so presumably sending :) via an SMS - if selected via a dedicated or softkey, would be a breach of the patent in future.'" My response? >:/

Been done

[taustin]

This patent will conflict with Despair.com's [despair.com] registered trademark, won't it?

We'll need to see the patent...but uh...

[Benanov]

You know, it looks like it's another one of those “we're doing X, but on the internet” patents, except this time it's on a phone.

I thought that I had lost all hope in the patent system some time ago, but I just lost more.

Re:Hmmm

[TheSpoom]

Doesn't matter, prior art doesn't mean that there has to be a previous patent. If it did, I could patent the wheel.

Love the emoticon, hate the "smileys"

[Anonymous Coward]

Obtaining little funny animated smileys seems to be as popular as changing your ring tone every hour on your cell phone. What's wrong with :)? It really doesn't need to be so flashy to get the point across. Maybe we should just go back to <g> for "grin".

The Article Is Simply Wrong

[XLawyer]

Cingular has not received any patent such as the article describes. The number that appears in the article, US2006015812, is actually a publication number for a U.S. patent application. The application itself [uspto.gov] can be found on the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office's web site [uspto.gov].

Not only is this only an application for a patent, and not only has this application not yet been granted, but the PTO hasn't even examined it yet. (You can look up the status of the application yourself using PAIR [uspto.gov].)

Cingular is not going to wind up with a patent that will stop you from using smileys in you text messages. In fact, on a quick read, the claims and specification appear to discuss ways to make it easier to insert emoticons in your text, not the mere use of emoticons. And the patent examiners, despite what you may have heard, are pretty tough about claims like this, too.

In short, it looks like the writer of the article dropped the ball here, not the U.S. Patent Office.

Sometimes...

[tkrotchko]

"they are patenting is the process of using a smiley on the phone/sending it."

Actually, now that I think of it, your interpretation makes the patent seem worse.

Here's why...

    If they got a patent on emoticons, you could justify it by saying "The patent examiner never heard of emoticons, ah ha!"

Instead, this indicates they knew about emoticons and felt that sending an emoticon was sufficiently unique that it deserved patent protection. In otherwords, the examiner was so stupid that they thought that emoticons had been invented, but never sent to anyone before. What were they thinking? Emoticons were first used on BBS's over the phone, but never sent? Huh?

Do you see?