The big, yellow smiley face has been around since the late 60s and was thought of as public domain. Not anymore. Walmart began using this logo on their employee uniforms and marketing materials in 1996 and now wants to trademark the image.
Frank Loufrani (one of the number of people who claim to have invented the image) and his company, SmileyWorld, are disputing the trademark before the U.S. Patent and Trademark office. Loufrani has been marketing this image since the early 70s and owns the rights in 80 countries, but not in the US.
How many of our tax dollars are going to be wasted on this snafu? Walmart is worth $500 billion (according to Donald Trump). Surely they have enough money to create a new mascot/logo. Why give the world one more reason to hate us, and over a stupid smiley face that was placed in the public domain over thirty years ago?
Sources: BBC and Scott-o-Rama
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They can buy and use my logo if they want.
I didn’t know people could trademark a public domain image. If they win, does this mean we can’t use smilies?
You can’t. I’m not sure how this is going to pan out or if we’ll have to remove the smilies from our blogs. We’ll find out in August.
I thought Forrest Gump invented it.
That movie gave the smiley face a comeback appearance, didn’t it?
Geez, this is so silly! Walmart gets enough bad press - to bring it on themselves with a stunt like this is just absurd!
I agree. Incidentally, I went there once with my in-laws and wasn’t impressed. Walmart is nothing more than a souped-up K-Mart.
Yet another reason not to shop at Wal-Mart.
Yep. I’ll shop at Target over Walmart any day.