Let's Not Let Facts Standing in the Way of a Good Story. In fact, Cingular didn't apply for a patent on emoticons this week. They applied for the patent on March 28, 2005, but the application was published this week. And they're not really trying to patent emoticons, but instead a sort of keyboard for selecting emoticons. But it seems like Method 4 at least will run into a prior art problem, since I think I've seen a similar virtual keypad on various IM programs throughout the years. Anyway, you can read the Register's take in "Cingular applies to patent smileys :@." From the article: "Cingular, the United States' largest mobile phone network this week applied to patent emoticons, better known as smileys."