Will PoA be removing the emoticons from this site?

ScottM

ScottM

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iBazinga!
PoA has often shown itself to be risk adverse in the area of copyright and trademark infringement often erring on the side of caution when it comes to postings. This has been documented by the MC in their locked thread describing how to utilize copywritten and trademarked material.

Now that emoticons are officially trademarked will the PoA site be removing or restricting our use of these items?

I refer to this news report on the owner of this trademark now requireing that one obtain a license to use these marks.

AP said:
A Russian businessman has trademarked the emoticon _ or combination of punctuation marks _ used to convey a wink in text messages and e-mail.
-----------

"Legal use will be possible after buying an annual license from us," he was quoted by Kommersant as saying. "It won't cost that much _ tens of thousands of dollars."


He also said since other similar emoticons _ :) or ;) or :) _ resemble the one he has trademarked, use of those symbols could also fall under his ownership.
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LINK
 
That's total hogwash.
If he successfully pulls that off, I'm going to trademark binary and charge $1 or each use.
 
Anthony said:
Do you have an emoticon for your license?



:D
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Why yes I do!

714.gif


:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:


That'll cost PoA a tidy sum!
 
I'm trademarking the letter a, and suing everyone. That'll allow us to pay for the defense against the trademark of ;) and :) and such.
 
Sir, Good luck enforcing your patent. By the way, you're an idiot to think you can.
 
mikea said:
You can patent an idea in 2008 that predates a collection published in 1997?

attachment.php


http://www.amazon.com/Smileys-David...=thepilotcast-20&s=books&qid=1229095585&sr=1-
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Not a patent, a trademark. There is a difference.

I can tell you that trademarking and patents are a royal PIA!! I once was involved with a case that had a company claim that they invented cellular telephony in 1994 and that everyone one in the wireless business owned them royalties. That patent was issued by the USPO BTW.

In this case the person made a claim that was believed by his nation's trademark office. Now it is up to him to go and prosecute his license fee and royalty arranged. This is not all that different from when Verizon trademarked the term "Push To Talk" just a few years ago. Even though that term was coined by another company in the 1940's
 
I think I'll just patent the S with a vertical bar through it. $. The US government (as well as a lot of other governments) owes me for every piece of paper they've published depicting my mark! :^)
 
One of the reasons Intel changed nomenclature on its computer chips from the "x86" to Pentium (and others) was that it realized there was no way it could trademark the numbers. Lost the argument with the courts.

My non-legal opinion is that any attempt to uphold text-based emoticons trademark will fail for the same reasons that Intel lost - just a bunch of characters. The graphic versions? I dunno.
 
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