Via Cellular News.
Just to debunk this story before the blogs take off with it, searching for the number provided by Cellular News at the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s online search does not come up any results.
Can anyone confirm the patent is real?
They haven’t received the patent yet, just applied for it.
Link
the patent application seems to indicate that it only applies to selecting emoticons based on a specific ’emoticon key’ — not the actual usage of emoticons. this is one of those ‘patent the implimentation’ patents, not ‘patent the concept’ patents… though i’d be suprised if there were no ‘prior art’ for this. surely _someone_ had a keypad with a smily face on it, no?