From Gamerscircle:
“Methods and devices for creating and transferring custom emoticons allow a user to adopt an arbitrary image as an emoticon, which can then be represented by a character sequence in real-time communication”
And at the end of a very detailed US patent Office document is this:
“[0075] The foregoing discussion describes exemplary custom emoticons, methods of creating and transferring emoticons, and an exemplary emoticon engine. Although the subject matter has been described in language specific to structural features and/or methodological acts, it is to be understood that the subject matter defined in the appended claims is not necessarily limited to the specific features or acts described above. Rather, the specific features and acts described above are disclosed as example forms of implementing the claims. “
In other words, ‘everything else just in case we missed a bit out’.
This cannot be possible.
Oh, that is f’ing retarded….
They better not start enforcing it, like the GIF/LZW thing.
Dude,
M$ has a patent on double-clicking. These patents have got to be virtually unenforceable. Seems to me that M$ has this ivory tower of lawyers who right now don’t have anything to do, so they’ve set them onto the task of applying for patents. They are climbing the patent mountain because it’s there.
I hope.