Personally, I don’t use emoticons. I’d much rather spell out the emoticon itself. So for example, “Happy 40th birthday! I guess you’re over the hill now! Winking emoticon!” But despite their status as a fun and kicky way to, I don’t know, punctuate(?), emoticons are deadly serious to a company called Varia Holdings LLC. It’s suing Research In Motion and Samsung over emoticons, specifically those companies use of:

an input key that, when pressed by the user while in text mode, results in the display of a list of emoticons for selection by the user. By displaying a list of emoticons, a more user friendly environment is created through which users may employ emoticons in their communications.

So BlackBerrys or PlayBooks and Samsung devices have a shortcut to a menu for people who can’t decide which emoticon to use. I don’t know about the actual intellectual property at work here but if the case leads to fewer emoticons, I’m kind of in favor of it. Winking emoticon. Frowning emoticon.