Re: [rohrpost] :-(

[Reinhold Grether <Reinhold.Grether@uni-konstanz.de>]

[[FWD: Trademarkrecherche ueber ASCII face trademarks]]

From: Phil Agre <pagre@alpha.oac.ucla.edu>

[The Despair trademark on :-( that Darius mentions can be found here:

  http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=75502288
  http://www.despair.com/demotivators/frownonthis.html

I think they did it as a joke, but honestly I don't want to know.]

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Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2001 15:29:56 -0500
From: Darius Thabit <darius@sprout.com>
Subject: ASCII face trademarks - collect the whole set

I was wondering if the frownie face had been trademarked for any
other categories of goods or services, so I searched the trademark
database for ":-(" and came up with a number of similar marks.  It's
not clear how their search engine deals with punctuation characters,
so there may well be other faces lurking.  Despair's trademark is the
earliest of this list, and seems to be one of the few already approved;
others are still in the application stage.

http://tess.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=login&p_lang=english&p_d=trmk


:-(     S/N 75502288, Filed 6/15/98
        G&S: greeting cards, posters, prints

:-)     S/N 75572861, Filed 10/19/98
        G&S: jewelry

>:->    S/N 75572863, Filed 10/19/98
        G&S: jewelry

>:-<    S/N 75572865, Filed 10/19/98
        G&S: jewelry

:-X     S/N 75572869, Filed 10/19/98
        G&S: jewelry

(:      S/N 75616918, Filed 1/7/99
        G&S: clothing, search engines, e-mail *

:-)     S/N 75755334, Filed 8/16/99
        G&S: t-shirts, caps, etc.

:)      S/N 75792339, Filed 9/3/99
        G&S: clothing

: D     S/N 75792570, Filed 9/7/99
        G&S: computer armrests, backpacks, et al.

: X     S/N 75793274, Filed 9/7/99
        G&S: table linen, computer armrests, bumper stickers, et al.

:-)     S/N 75893756, Filed 1/10/00
        G&S: clothing


* Yes, here is an ASCII face that someone is actually trying to trademark
in conjunction with e-mail (eat your heart out, E.L.Kersten :^)

However, the description for this G&S class reads:

        Computer telecommunication services, namely, transmission of
        data over a global computer network; electronic mail services

So this mark probably applies to providing or promoting an e-mail
*service* and would not pertain to the use of the mark *in* e-mail.

[PS, 3:21pm: seriously now, the idea that the contents of a private
e-mail could violate *any* trademark, as Despair, Inc. "threatened" in
their "press release", is - as they well know - ludicrous.  For now at
least :-]




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