{"id":1729,"date":"2024-07-10T16:45:20","date_gmt":"2024-07-10T16:45:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/nirvana-smiley-face-logo-lawsuit-against-marc-jacobs-settled\/"},"modified":"2024-07-10T16:45:20","modified_gmt":"2024-07-10T16:45:20","slug":"nirvana-smiley-face-logo-lawsuit-against-marc-jacobs-settled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/nirvana-smiley-face-logo-lawsuit-against-marc-jacobs-settled\/","title":{"rendered":"Nirvana Smiley Face Logo Lawsuit Against Marc Jacobs Settled"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tA legal battle over Nirvana<\/a>\u2018s iconic smiley face logo will end in a settlement, resolving years of sprawling litigation between the band, fashion designer Marc Jacobs<\/strong> and a former Geffen Records art designer who claims he created it.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a notice filed in Los Angeles federal court on Tuesday, attorneys for all three sides said they had accepted a mediator\u2019s proposal to end the long-running case over the logo, which has appeared on countless t-shirts and other merch in the years since Kurt Cobain\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

\n\tAttorneys told Judge John A. Kronstadt<\/strong> that they would formalize the settlement within 21 days, and the judge later removed all upcoming hearings and other deadlines. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, and each side did not return a request for comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tNirvana\u2019s logo \u2013 a yellow smiley face with X\u2019d-out eyes \u2014 first appeared during promotion for 1991\u2019s Nevermind<\/em>. The design eventually became something of an unofficial emblem for the band, and has become particularly prominent again in recent years amid a wave of 90s nostalgia among younger music fans.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe band\u2019s lawyers first sued Marc Jacobs in 2018, accusing the design house of using a look-alike image on a line of its own t-shirts and other apparel called \u201cBootleg Redux Grunge.\u201d They said Jacobs had just replaced \u201cNirvana\u201d with the word \u201cHeaven\u201d and replaced the two eyes with an \u201cM\u201d and a \u201cJ,\u201d but had changed little else.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDefendants\u2019 use of Nirvana\u2019s copyrighted image on and to promote its products is intentional, and is part and parcel of a wider campaign to associate [the Grunge line] with Nirvana, one of the founders of the \u2018grunge\u2019 musical genre,\u201d the band\u2019s attorneys wrote at the time.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn their initial complaint, Nirvana\u2019s lawyers said the smiley face had been created by the late Cobain \u2013 the conventional wisdom for decades about the logo\u2019s origins. But soon after the case was filed, a former Geffen art director named Robert Fisher<\/strong> jumped into the case: \u201cIt is, in fact, Mr. Fisher, who authored the Happy Face, not Mr. Kurt Cobain.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFor 30 years now, Nirvana has reaped enormous profits from Mr. Fisher\u2019s works through the sale of a wide range of products,\u201d his lawyers wrote. \u201cAssisted by a team of lawyers and managers, Nirvana was able to do so without any compensation to Mr. Fisher by falsely claiming authorship and ownership.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSince Fisher entered the case, the band\u2019s lawyers have staunchly maintained that it was Cobain who designed the image. At the very least, they\u2019ve argued, if it was Fisher who created the image, he did so when he was employed by Geffen at the time \u2013 meaning it was a \u201cwork for hire\u201d and the label retained all rights to the image.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn December, Judge Kronstadt largely agreed with Nirvana on that issue. Fisher later sought to appeal that ruling, but the judge denied that motion last month, saying he would need to wait until after Nirvana and Marc Jacobs went to trial to file an appeal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A legal battle over Nirvana\u2018s iconic smiley face logo will end in a settlement, resolving years of sprawling litigation between the band, fashion designer Marc Jacobs and a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1730,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[422,2438,303,2436,2437,2434,974,2435],"class_list":["post-1729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-face","tag-jacobs","tag-lawsuit","tag-logo","tag-marc","tag-nirvana","tag-settled","tag-smiley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}