Carl Jonard Technically Still Has a Blog

First of all, have you seen the trailer for Watchmen? Awesome. If you haven’t read the graphic novel yet, you should, because I can only assume that they’ll have to cut quite a bit to fit into a movie’s running time. Anyway, I noticed this oddity at the end of the trailer:

“Smiley Face Logo: ™ Smileyworld, Ltd.” Strange…

The smiley face, of course, appears in the opening and closing panels of the graphic novel, and is being used as one of the promotional elements for the movie itself. But what the heck is Smileyworld?

This is why they invented eBay.

Back in the day, people somehow got it into their heads that I loved smiley faces, and I amassed a truly embarrassing collection of the stuff. So I consider myself something of a smiley face expert, but I had never heard of Smileyworld, Ltd.

I knew that Mantis Design had a copyright notice on the bottom of their Have a Day posters, but they certainly didn’t claim to own the original smiley face.

My boss used to claim to have invented the smiley face, but I saw what he drew back in the 60’s, and it’s not the same thing.

It’s been pretty well established that the smiley face as we know it today was designed in 1963 by Harvey Ball as a button for an insurance firm. He was paid $45. It was popularized by Bernard and Murray Spain in 1970, who added the phrase “Have a nice day,” and put it on posters and t-shirts. The rest was history. Because the symbol was reproduced over 50 million times before anyone thought to try copyrighting it, the smiley face has long been recognized in the U.S. as being in the public domain. You can find a very good summary of the history, as usual, at The Straight Dope.

The lawsuit-happy douchebags behind it all

But apparently, there is some dingus in France named Franklin Loufrani, who in 1971 (or 1972, or 1969, or 1968, depending on which version of the story you read), claims to have miraculously come up with an identical design to the one drawn by Mr. Ball 8 years earlier, and he had the missing soul chutzpah shrewd business acumen needed to claim ownership of the smiley face in basically every country in the world except the U.S., where it was already too late. (In the U.S., the best he could do was trademark using the face along with the word “Smiley.”)

Incredibly, he’s gotten away with it so far. He’s built up a massive empire for himself on this fraudulent backstory, with an organization that now encompases The Smiley Company (”one of the few licensed brands to have exceeded 1,000,000,000 USD in sales”), Smiley World (”a brand concept to help people communicate better”), Smiley Design by oro-ito (”an innovating concept the creation of a multi-specialist brand devoted to provide happiness in all its forms. The smiley lines are developed to make you feel better by following a HAPPY THERAPY”), Smiley Collection (”the positive associations evoked by the logo serve to promote the Smiley brand, which is positioned in the lifestyle sector”), and the Smiley World Association (”helping people in need, SWA provides assistance to victims of social exclusion”). There is no mention of Harvey Ball or the Spain brothers anywhere in their (extensive) promotional materials.

Yes, American hippies time-traveled forward to 1972 and ripped off the icons from a French newspaper. That's the ticket!

As far as I can tell, the primary business model of Smiley Licensing is finding anyone who uses a smiley face and suing (or threatening to sue) the pants off of them.

“Companies such as Agfa, Mars, Christian Dior, Fuji, Jean Charles de Castelbajac, Levi’s, Mars, McCain, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Sony, Tommy Hilfiger and many more have been working with us to radiate happiness throughout the world.”

*barf*

I have to hand to their lawyers; they are ambitious; they went after Wal-Mart and apparently led them to phase out their use of the smiley face icon. Now, apparently, they’ve managed to squeeze some money out of the Watchmen franchise, which probably did more to popularize the stupid thing than they ever did.

Congratulations, Monsieur Loufrani. You may have your money, but the world knows you are a fraud. You did not “invent” the smiley face; you simply appropriated an icon that was already popular for your stupid newspaper column, and decided to spend the rest of your life (and your son’s) leeching off of the work of others and perpetuating a lie. The most ironic part is that, due to the nature of the icon, you are forced to hide this greed behind a non-stop barrage of meaningless language about “happiness” and “positive thinking.” You are a horrible person, and I sincerely hope that you do not have a nice day.