Microsoft wants to patent smileys

Microsoft filed yet another peculiar patent in the US which covers selecting pixels to create an emoticon image, assigning a character sequence to these pixels and reconstructing the emoticon after transmission.

Mark Taylor, the executive director of the Open Source Consortium, said on Friday said this is such a basic concept that he would not have been surprised to see it posted as a fictional patent on a technology site.

Some people claim Microsoft may use this patent to prevent competitors from developing instant messaging clients that compete with its MSN Messenger.

Now this would really a splendid example of an absurd patent. Read more about it at ZDNet