Russian trademarks emoticon for a wink

MOSCOW (AP) — How much would you pay for a ;-)?

A Russian businessman has trademarked the emoticon — or combination of punctuation marks — used to convey a wink in text messages and e-mail.

Oleg Teterin, president of the mobile ad company Superfone, said Thursday he doesn’t plan on tracking down individual users after the decision by the federal patent agency.

He also said since other similar emoticons — :-) or ;) or :) — resemble the one he has trademarked, use of those symbols could also fall under his ownership.

Scott Fahlman, a professor at the Carnegie Mellon University in the United States, claims that he was the first to use three keystrokes — a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis — as a horizontal “smiley face” in a computer message 25 years ago.