Cingular Patents the Emoticon

The news reached me today that Cingular Wireless has obtained a patent on the emoticon :(.

The USA based mobile operator, Cingular Wireless has managed to get a patent on the concept of using emoticon on mobile phones. 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.

One of the requirements for an idea to be patentable is that it be non-obvious. Somehow, I find it hard to believe any that sane person would consider this non-obvious. My god, every first grader with a mobil phone has been doing this for years. If the test for creativity is that low, we might as well patent the idea of breathing. I wonder which megafirm will try to patent that. I suppose we would all have to pay a royalty each time we took a breath.