March 28, 2008

Have a Nice Day: Wal-Mart Doesn’t Control the Smiley Face

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Happy happy joy joy. Wal-Mart has lost its claim that it alone owns the smiley face. Last week, a federal judge ruled that the websites Walocaust and Wal-Qaeda have the right to spoof the company’s smiley-face logo. It’s not the first time the chain has wrangled over possession of the vapidly feel-good ’70s icon; in 2006 a French businessman who claimed to have invented it tried to block Wal-Mart’s attempt to trademark it. (The real creator of the smiley actually appears to be this guy—and not Forrest Gump, either.) The store won that round, saving us from the disaster that would have been Freedom Smileys. But at least the French smileys would have been allowed to unionize.

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