Who’s Smiling Now? Nirvana and Marc Jacobs Settle Logo Lawsuit.
Oh, that lawsuit Nirvana filed against the fashion line Marc Jacobs for using its smiley face logo without permission?
Nevermind. After more than a half-decade of litigation, the sides have agreed to settle.
The corporate entity representing Nirvana sued Marc Jacobs International in 2018 after the fashion line announced it would release a “Bootleg Redux Grunge” collection of clothing that featured a smiley face logo the lawsuit called “virtually identical to Nirvana’s copyrighted image.”
Nirvana’s smiley face has an uneven head, X’s for eyes and a wavy smile with a tongue sticking out on the right side of its face. Marc Jacobs’s smiley face, which was part of both clothing designs and general marketing promotion for the collection, looks the same but swaps in an “M” and “J” for the X’s.
The rock band has used its smiley face logo since the early 1990s. In addition to the poster for the release party for the “Nevermind” album, the symbol has been included on T-shirts, hoodies, shot glasses and other merchandise.
The Marc Jacobs collection was a callback to the eponymous designer’s 1992 grunge collection for Perry Ellis, which both got him fired from the company and announced his arrival as a major force in the fashion world.
