"According to Wikipedia, emoticons can be traced back to the 19th century. The first documented use of a colon, hyphen and closed-parenthesis to convey happiness dates from 1982"

Wouldn't that be the 20th Century, or has someone substituted my blue lozenge-shaped anti-Dementia tabs for a placebo? (Viagra maybe?) © ;-)

Surely 1982 was in the 20th Century?

Doesn't the concept of 'prior art' apply to trade marks as it does to patents? In other words, the fact that millions of people have been freely using this sequence of characters for years before the Crazy Rusky tried to grab it should have prevented the trade mark being granted in the frist place...or do the characters not exist on a Cyrillic keyboard?

Smiley face, so sue me.

I think you misread the article. It says that * emoticons* can be traced back to the 19th century - the :-) is just a specific example, and that dates back to 1982.

From Wikipedia: "Although historical antecedents go back to the nineteenth century, the emoticon as we presently use it traces directly back to a proposal by Scott Fahlman in a message of 19th September 1982"

"Doesn't the concept of 'prior art' apply to trade marks as it does to patents?"

No, obviously not. Just think of trademarks like e.g. Apple or Sun, those words might be even a little bit older than the first use of emoticons ;) so how would anyone have been able to use register those as a trademark then, if there was such a thing as "prior art" for trademarks?

Usually the articles I read are the other way around. Russia is the wild west of internet and IP where anything goes. Internet criminals love hosting things in Russia because they know Russia will cordially extend their middle finger to anyone attempting to put the brakes on it.

Why should Europe (or the US for that matter) honor any intellectual property or trademarks coming out of Russia if they won't reciprocate?

It sounds the other way around, not

<<they have effectively become descriptive terms in common parlance>>

but

<<they have originated and remained as descriptive terms for common parlance>>

PH because it's a writing-dodgers topic

So there!

(-;

Any chance we can get this idiots....erm businessmans E-mail address so that I can email him with his trademark? Thank you ;-)

I remember that Despair trademarked the :-( emoticon in an act of protest; basically to show how stupid it was that someone could actually trademark such a thing. They "asked" for $$$ to use the :-(, but it really was more of a joke on the whole thing. They got slammed by the slashdotters who didn't get the joke.

I really hope this guy is pulling off a similar thing.