Published by deborah.woehr on 16 May 2006 at 04:44 pm
Walmart Making a Grab for the 1970’s Smiley Face
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
Lee Pletzers on 16 May 2006 at 5:35 pm #
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?
deborah.woehr on 16 May 2006 at 6:16 pm #
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.
jason evans on 18 May 2006 at 4:42 am #
I thought Forrest Gump invented it.
deborah.woehr on 18 May 2006 at 6:54 am #
That movie gave the smiley face a comeback appearance, didn’t it?
Marti on 18 May 2006 at 10:14 am #
Geez, this is so silly! Walmart gets enough bad press - to bring it on themselves with a stunt like this is just absurd!
deborah.woehr on 18 May 2006 at 11:42 am #
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.
pat kirby on 19 May 2006 at 8:48 am #
Yet another reason not to shop at Wal-Mart.
deborah.woehr on 19 May 2006 at 8:51 am #
Yep. I’ll shop at Target over Walmart any day.