What happend to these ppl, they got a trademark on " ;( " and wanted to stop people using it. It happend few months ago, for all you in the US...what happend?

Same thing happened about a year ago with :-) or :)
One of them anyway.

Check these out

:-( (http://www.nameprotect.com/cgi-bin/FREESearch/search.cgi?action=SEARCH&db=PTO&ss=%3A-%28&imageField.x=5&imageField.y=12)
:-) (http://www.nameprotect.com/cgi-bin/FREESearch/search.cgi?action=SEARCH&db=PTO&ss=%3A-%29&imageField.x=18&imageField.y=21)

Well, I know someone who used to host their site on despair.com, and I'm pretty sure it's just a joke about not letting anyone else use the ;( emoticon. They do seem to have a copyright on it (I think?), but they're not going to stop others from using it.