The emoticons that we so freely use has now become a trademark of Oleg Teterin from Superfone company in Russia. It had been granted to him the federal patent agency, Russia. Oleg stated in a newspaper:
Legal use will be possible after buying an annual licence from us..
It won’t cost that much – tens of thousands of dollars
Even it costs a penny, who is going to pay for using emoticons? And more importantly who are they going to charge? Nikita Sherman called it to be a stupid idea, to pay Superfone for using emoticons. I fail to understand what would make anyone think of doing such a thing, don’t they have better things to do?
Couldn’t they then charge gmail, aim, etc… a licensing fee for the emoticons? Then they wouldn’t have to charge individuals at all.
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