Wal-Mart Smiley Face: Trademark Competition
Wal-Mart’s legal department must have a pretty large budget. The retail giant is already facing several lawsuits, including a charge they forced employees to work off the clock, another alleging they pay women less than men, another accusing them of hiring illegal immigrants, and accusations that Wal-Mart is building a superstore next to an ancient Mexican pyramid and another over a Hawaiian burial ground. Wal-Mart says they are sued every two hours every day of the week, and have 9,400 open cases, according to USA Today.
So adding another lawsuit regarding rights to a U.S. Trademark for the yellow smiley face Wal-Mart has been using should be no big deal. The Frenchmen who claims to have invented the icon in 1968, Franklin Loufrani, already has rights to the logo in 80 countries and now wants the same rights in the U.S. Loufrani runs his company, Smiley World, from London and is preparing for a long legal battle. Wal-Mart has been using Smiley since 1996.
But it may be tough to win a case against a company with perhaps the largest legal budget in the world, and the situation also begs the question as to why Loufrani waited so long to apply for rights on the mark in the U.S., especially when he was sure to notice Wal-Mart’s blue vests and TV ads embellished with the logo.
Even if Wal-Mart loses the rights to the icon, it won’t devastate the company, since their new advertising campaign doesn’t include Smiley swooshing around the store lowering prices. Wal-Mart says their new campaign focus will be more lifestyle oriented and less focused on price, so they’ve demoted Smiley to play a minimal role. A Wall Street Journal article stated many marketing experts agree it may be time for Smiley to “hang up his blue vest” altogether anyway.
We’ll see how it turns out.