This makes me really >:(
Regular visitors to DNA will I'm sure be familiar with my issues over trademarking of symbols and everyday language.
Now a Russian entrepreneur has gone and trademarked an emoticon.
Not just any old emoticon mind you. My favourite one.
Honestly how on earth can someone lay claim to the ownership of a combination of a semi-colon, hyphen and a bracket?
It's totally insane.
What next? Someone trademarking individual letters of the alphabet?
posted by Stan Lee at 3:19 pm
6 Comments:
=(
Yes, it's insane. Anyway, That's Russia :)
I think you are one to something there. Call the attny's. We can form an LLC to hold the copywrites. A-Y (no need for Z, it just isn't used that much)
:)
shot gun the 'full stop' I'm going to be rich!
stan, my half-arsed legal advice is to keep using the damned emoticon, so long as it's not in a commercial application, and you'll be fine. there's a difference between breaking a law and action being taken - the time and money that mr russian entrepreneur will waste in suing you (or 99% of others out there using it) will not be worth the 'investment' in the trademark. don't use it in client copy and you'll probably come off ok.
having said all that - i'm an artist, not a lawyer. so take that all with a pinch of salt.
we'll just have to start playing around more.
;•)
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