Microsoft patents emoticons, copyrights ROTFL
Okay, so I'm just kidding about that second part. But the first statement is legit. According to a filing with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, Microsoft has been granted a patent for "methods and devices for creating and transferring custom emoticons to allow a user to adopt an arbitrary image as an emoticon, which can then be represented by a character sequence in real-time communication." What this sounds like is a patent for the common practice of allowing users to type an emoticon key sequence — like :) — into an IM client and have it automatically replaced by a graphic. No word on whether Microsoft plans to go after anyone for this, but to play it safe, you may want to keep your smileys as text — or just stop using them altogether; the whole idea is kind of tired anyhow, and seeing it patented by Microsoft sort of takes all the fun out of it. :(
[Via The Raw Feed]
