Eh? What? I have a hard time believing what I just read myself, but Microsoft has patented emoticons (or well, filed for patent, patent no. 20050156873). More specifically, they’ve patented the method of making a character sequence, such as a colon and a right paranthesis, being “converted” into a graphic, which is recreated at the receiving end. That is, : ) becomes 🙂
On the one hand, I can’t believe that this is something people can have the idea of patenting – but I guess this is what happens if you can patent programming methods/algorithms.
It’s a crazy world. Or a stupid one.
