Cingular Making Faces

According to Cellular News, Cingular Wireless has managed to get is applying for a patent on the concept of using emoticon on mobile phones.

While the aim of the patent is to enable the displaying of MSN style graphics on handsets, they also want managed to patent the delivery of text based emoticon – so presumably sending 🙂 via an SMS – if selected via a dedicated or softkey, would be a breach of the patent in future.
[via The Spunker]