MOSCOW, RUSSIA — A Russian entrepreneur’s claim to have patented ;-), the combination of characters used to denote a virtual wink, has been debunked.:-)

Rospatent, the Russian equivalent of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, said Friday Oleg Teterin had overstated his claims on the mark. The symbol is in use only as part of the logo for Teterin’s company Superphone, a Rospatent spokeman said.

“The smiley does not identify the company and cannot be used as its trademark and cannot be registered as such,” the official told the RIA-Novosti news agency.

:-O

On Thursday, Teterin laid claim to the trademark and threatened to charge companies — but not individuals — for using the mark.

“I want to highlight that this is only directed at corporations; companies that are trying to make a profit without the permission of the trademark holder,” he told Russian independent television network NTV.

Teterin said he was very serious about capitalizing his investment, but planned to be fair in licensing relationships: “It won’t cost that much — tens of thousands of dollars,” he told the business newspaper Kommersant.

He also claimed that because other emoticons like :-), 😉 and 🙂 “reasonably might be considered confusing,” he held a vested interest in them, as well.

😐

Initial reactions ran the gamut from 🙁 to :-x, >:-\ and 😀

“Imagine the next wise-guy who trademarks the 33 letters of the Russian alphabet and then says anyone who uses the Russian alphabet has to send him money. It’s absurd,” Alexander Manis, director of a Russian ISP, told NTV.

Others were :-S, saying they didn’t understand how a symbol that has been part of the worldwide digital vernacular for a quarter century could be patented. Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott Fahlman claims to have been the first person to use the “smiley face” — 🙂 — in written correspondence some 25 years ago. The symbol also represented Britain’s “acid house” music movement in the 1980s.

A claim to trademarks on emoticons has revolved through the Russian courts before. According to Kommersant, in 2005 a Russian court overturned a claim allegedly held by another Russian businessman who tried to enforce a trademark right against German electronics giant Siemens.