Need to change to Only On A Wal-Mart Employee.
This sounds like a joke, but nothing about Wal-Mart is.
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.
Wal-Mart plans to purchase the sun soon and charge us all for anything we eat, drink, or breath in…..
You mean Forest Gump didn’t “invent” the smiley face running across country?
Should prior art be real easy to prove. Just find a smiley face from before 1996. A company I worked for had the shot smiley in their catalog before that.
There is a town in northeast Indiana (Ashley) that claims to be the home of the smiley face. They have a large water tower that is painted yellow with a smiley face on it. What would Walmart do about them???
http://www.ashley.in.gov/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley,_Indiana
Something as basic as a symbol in the alphabet cannot be copyrighted. This is the reason why font stealing is rampant. The courts do not allow designers to copyright the “expression of an idea” but the “idea” only. The word “BLADE RUNNER” in its signature fonts can be trademarked, but the alphabet in Blade Runner font style cannot.
Smiley faces make me barf. But, for the couple of decades and more that I’ve been computing, they have been offered up as an item in one or another catalog of insertable characters.
Just now, going to Pages > Edit > Special Characters > Miscellaneous — I bump into ☺.
#7 = pomposity.
C’mon Paul. My kid thinks they are cute. Especially the animated ones. I hope you don’t think she is a fatuous, low-prole, vacuous, mini consumer. Besides, they are easy to draw.
“Should prior art be real easy to prove.”
You’re thinking of patents. It’s perfectly legal to take something out of the public domain and trademark it for eternity. Heck, even colors can be trademarked. Long after the copyright has expired on Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, Paramount holds a trademark on the image and will continue to do so until it decides to drop it.
And nowadays big business does not even have to prove any confusion in the marketplace. An “infamous” trademark will have absolute protection across any market. E.g., McDonalds.
it says they only want to protect it for the U.S. retail market. Now *retail* can be a broad term but maybe they can limit it to retail stores.
I am not sure what is next, but imagine being sued for having an apple on your desk with one bite out of it. More appropriate maybe would be Home Depot being sued by Microsoft for selling “Windows”, or the state of Florida being sued by Home Depot for being the “Orange” state….
Screw Walmart, I remember the smily face in the early 70s. They stole it. They need to get a life.
oh man ed…..I love the smily that moons you…..now THATS high art.
CocaCola trademarked “Coke” after the public bestowed that name on the soda back when. I don’t think Wal-Mart co-opting the smiley face is quite the same.
You’re thinking of patents. It’s perfectly legal to take something out of the public domain and trademark it for eternity.
Agreed.
And, it doesn’t help that Uncle Dave used “copyright” in the title, instead of “trademark”… 🙂
The fact that Wal-mart has been making extensive use of the smiley for the last ten years – with no objections from anyone – also weakens any arguments against Walmarts attempt to “get a lock on it”.
Reminds me of Fox trying to claim trademark status for “Fair & Balanced” – after Al used it for parody.
Mike, you’re right! I made a mistake in terminology. Fixed!
WalMart is always trying to do over the little man. When are they going to stop bullying people?
Can you imagine 20-30 years from now, the youth thinking the “Smiley” as only being associated with Wal-Mart, instead of it’s origins and what it meant in the 70’s / 80’s and 90’s……….
Think about the the swastika and the Nazi’s
(for those who don’t know, the swastika was around long before the nazi’s used it and turned into “their logo”)
uummm, do we want to let this happen to the smiley face?