Apparently you can patent character groupings known as emoticons since
I just read Cingular was allowed to patent mobile emoticons. At first glance I thought this sounded absurd. How can a mobile company or anyone for that matter own characters grouped together to form an alternate meaning like the smiley face? :)
In reading further I determined it was not just the character groupings that made up the patent but a system used to display faces via mobile devices. Feew, I thought I was going to have to quickly patent the question mark when transmitted via a mobile device. Thankfully, I will not! ;)
*Emoticons image thanks to JaguarWoman.com
