Samsung, RIM sued over emoticon patents

For better or worse, you've likely used an emoticon on your smartphone at one point. But who owns the rights to these digital forms of expression? A company known as Varia Holdings has filed suit against Samsung, arguing that the company's use of emoticons on devices like the Captivate, Droid Charge, Epic, Galaxy Nexus, and more violate a patent issued in 2007 for emoticons (or emoji) on mobile devices. According to Ars Technica, Varia is also going after Research in Motion on the same grounds over the Bold, Curve, Pearl, and Storm. As described by Varia, emoticons are "pictorial representations of an expression or a person's mood." For example, typing in ":)" turns into a smiley face. The Samsung lawsuit, filed in New York district court, points to the Galaxy Nexus. "When the user presses the smiley key ... while in text mode, a list of emoticons for selection by the user is displayed on the screen," Varia lawyers wrote. The Samsung Galaxy S, meanwhile, includes an "insert smiley" key while in text mode. The suit comes several months after Samsung sued Apple over four new patents, one of which related to emoticons. Varia mentioned that suit in its own filing, arguing that Samsung is well-aware of Varia's patent holdings. "Samsung is a prolific patent filer that actively protects its intellectual property rights," Varia said. Samsung owns more than 21,800 U.S. patent issued between January 2007 and January 2012 - 99 of which are in the same class and subclass as Varia's emoticon patent, the suit said. The fact that Samsung sued Apple over emoticons means that "Samsung actively monitors PTO filings on technologies related to Samsung products and knew of the [Varis] patent at or around the date of its issuance," Varia said. Samsung does not yet have a comment on the case. RIM did not immediately respond to a request for comment.