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Russian firm trademarks smiley, threatens to sue non-payers

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A Russian mobile advertising firm has registered the smiley emoticon as its trademark and will sue companies that do not pay for the right to use the image, a Russian business daily said on Thursday.
MOSCOW, December 11 (RIA Novosti) - A Russian mobile advertising firm has registered the smiley emoticon as its trademark and will sue companies that do not pay for the right to use the image, a Russian business daily said on Thursday.

However, Kommersant quoted market players who said the Superphone president, Oleg Teterin, would be unlikely to find "fools" willing to pay for use of the image, believed to have originated in the United States in the 1960s. It was also one of the symbols of Britain's acid house movement in the 1980s.

Companies that use smiley faces in one form or another include Nestle, McDonalds, and the popular Russian social network Odnoklassniki.ru.

Teterin said on Wednesday that the trademark had been registered as belonging to his company with the appropriate Russian authorities, the paper reported.

"This means no commercial organization in Russia can use the image in advertising. This does not concern ordinary people using smiley faces, let's say, in the Internet," he said.

Teterin said, as quoted by the paper, that Superphone would demand compensation for the illegal use of the images. He said his company would offer a year-long license for smiley faces for "several dozen thousand dollars."

A partner in the Russian Salans law firm told the paper that non-payers could face an up to 5 million ruble (roughly $180,000) fine and could have their goods withdrawn for the unauthorized use of the trademark.

However, Viktor Naumov said the registration of the trademark was not quite legitimate as "the images have been widely used and their registration as a trademark could be in conflict with public interests," Kommersant said.

The president of Odnoklassniki.ru, a network service for classmates and old friends that is popular in Russia and in the former Soviet Union and claims to have 25 million registered users, brushed aside the warning, the paper said.

"There are no idiots in Russia who will pay for the use of smileys," Nikita Sherman told the daily.

The director of mobile phone operator VimpelCom's Internet branch said the company would not pay as a matter of principle, the paper reported.

"Let's patent brackets and count how many times [popular Russian writer Alexandra] Marinina uses them in her books," Alexander Malis said.

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