Oleg Teterin, president of Russian mobile phone advertiser Superfone announced that the Russian Federal Patent agency has granted him the trademark for the popular emoticon ;-). Though many doubt the legality of this move, owing to the symbol’s long life in the public domain, Teterin says that he’s only expecting money from corporations that wish to otherwise use it for free. Furthermore, he wishes to keep it affordable, offering interested parties use of the symbol for a small annual fee in the realm of “tens of thousands of dollars.” What might be even stranger, is that this isn’t the first time this emoticon as appeared in Russian court. In 2005, a man attempted to sue German company Siemens, claiming he held the trademark, but the company’s appeal was later upheld.
This situation might seem slightly ridiculous, but it interests us because it brings to light some of the sticky questions surrounding copyright law in the digital age. As we’ve discussed in a previous post, the Internet’s ability to instantly copy information and make it available to anyone makes for new vagueness around definitions of terms like originality and ownership, particularly as they pertain to ideas.
[via BBC]
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Oleg won’t get away with it. I already have the TM on the hyphen. And let that be a warning to you. Hyphenators, you owe me.
December 13th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Interesting article and comment!………..
In some countries you can register any trade mark that you want, as long as it’s not registered there, and the product is not on the market there.
The company which I was working for, did only this all over the world, and then MN companies who say that they own the TM and claim it back, we just used to sell it to them, as in most cases it’s cheaper to buy it from us than to start a legal procedure and pay the fees for the solicitors and take us to court, and loosing time and money. You only can do this if you have a ’solid back of $$$’ behind you, as these Multi Nationals (MN), will take the ‘blood’ out of you if they see that you don’t have the financial sources to pay a TOP ATTORNEY office who can represent you or defend you, and is dealing with Intellectual Property Rights, and belongs to the TOP of the TOP.
Most MN paid and none of the cases came in the public media/press.
December 14th, 2008 at 6:51 pm