Cingular Patents the Emoticon :(
January 27th, 2006 | by amarfresh |R U Kidding Me!
Yes, it’s true.
“While the aim of the patent is to enable the displaying of MSN style graphics on handsets, they also managed to patent the delivery of text based emoticon - so presumably sending :) via an SMS - if selected via a dedicated or softkey, would be a breach of the patent in future.”
And Al Gore invented the Internet…