Unreal... From BBC News:
Wal-Mart seeks smiley face rights
Wal-Mart is embroiled in a legal dispute over the smiley face image which it wants to trademark in the US.
A Frenchman who claims to have invented the yellow smiley face back in 1968 is opposing the US retail giant's move.
For some, the image is a reminder of 1970s counter-culture, for others, a useful shorthand when sending e-mails.
But since 1996, Wal-Mart has used the image in the US on uniforms and promotional signs, and it wants sole rights to it in the US retail sector.
Global rights
Franklin Loufrani - just one of a number of people who profess to have invented the image - has marketed the sign since the early 1970s.
He and his London-based company SmileyWorld today own the rights to the logo in more than 80 countries around the world.
The US is not included in this list, and SmileyWorld and Wal-Mart are now at loggerheads before the US Patent and Trademark Office.
A final decision is expected in August.
Not so fast Mr. Cheese-eating surrender monkey. From The Straight Dope:
But who invented the original smiley face? The best bet is that the smiley Bernard and Murray had seen floating around was created circa December 1963 for a subsidiary of the State Mutual insurance company by Harvey Ball, a graphic artist in Worcester, Massachusetts. Harvey got the assignment from the company's promotions director, Joy Young, who wanted a smile button for a morale boosting campaign ordered up by her boss. Harvey, not a man to waste ink, initially drew just the smile. Pondering the result, he realized that if you turned the button upside down, it became ... a frown! To head incipient wise-arsedness off at the pass, he added two eyes, which of course you could also turn upside down, but then it meant ... I'm standing on my head!--a more ambiguous sociopolitical message. He made the thing yellow to give it a sunshiny look, and State Mutual, whom nobody would accuse of rashness, printed up 100. The buttons were a big hit, the company began handing them out by the thousands, and the rest you know. Mr. Ball's total take: his $45 art fee. State Mutual, not very quick on the uptake, didn't make any money either.
Fine, but how do we know Harvey wasn't just copying some still earlier unsung genius? It's not as thought nobody had ever drawn a smiley face before. Bernard Spain says he's heard Sunkist oranges used smileys in a 1930s ad campaign, and we find smileys in Munro Leaf's 1936 kid's book Manners Can Be Fun. But the Leaf smileys are crude black-and-white stick drawings bearing little resemblance to the finished work of art cranked out by Harvey Ball. Speaking as the voice of history, we declare Harv the author of this classic piece of Americana--and if anybody wants to take the honor away, they'll have to talk to us. Bidding starts at a hundred bucks.
I wonder if Mr. Loufrani's claim can be revoked. I bet he has some good lawyers but there is ample case of prior art...
