The legal battle is over NirvanaThe iconic smiley face logo will reach a settlement, resolving years-long differences between the band and the fashion designer Marc Jacobs and a former Geffen Records art designer who claims to have created it.
In a statement filed in Los Angeles federal court on Tuesday, lawyers for all three sides said they accepted a mediator's offer to end the long-running case over the logo, which has appeared on countless T-shirts and other merchandise in recent years. The death of Kurt Cobain.
said the lawyers Judge John A. Kronstadt 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 neither side returned a request for comment.
Nirvana's logo – a yellow smiley face with bulging eyes – first appeared during promotion for 1991 Does not matter. The design eventually became something of an unofficial emblem for the band, and has become particularly prominent in recent years amid a wave of '90s nostalgia among younger music fans.
The band's lawyers first sued Marc Jacobs in 2018, accusing the design house of using a similar image on a line of its own T-shirts and other clothing dubbed “Bootleg Redux Grunge.” They said Jacobs had just replaced “Nirvana” with the word “Heaven” and the two eyes with an “M” and a “J,” but little had changed.
“Defendants' use of Nirvana's copyrighted image to promote its products is deliberate and an integral part of a larger campaign to associate [the Grunge line] with Nirvana, one of the founders of the 'grunge' music genre,” the band's lawyers wrote at the time.
In their original complaint, Nirvana's lawyers said the smiley face had been created by the late Cobain – the conventional wisdom for decades about the logo's origins. But soon after the case was filed, a former Geffen art director was named Robert Fisher jumped on the case: “Actually, Mr. Fisher is the author of Happy Face, not Mr. Kurt Cobain.”
“For 30 years, Nirvana has profited enormously from Mr. Fisher's works through the sale of a wide range of products,” his lawyers wrote. “With the help of a team of lawyers and managers, Nirvana was able to do this without any compensation to Mr. Fisher, falsely claiming authorship and ownership.”
Since Fisher joined the case, the band's lawyers have strongly argued that it was Cobain who designed the image. At the very least, they've argued, if Fisher did create the image, he did so while working for Geffen at the time – meaning it was a “work for hire” and the company retained all rights to the image.
In December, Judge Kronstadt largely agreed with Nirvana on this issue. Fisher later tried to appeal that ruling, but the judge rejected that motion last month, saying he would have to wait until Nirvana and Marc Jacobs went to trial to file an appeal.
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/pro/nirvana-smiley-face-logo-lawsuit-marc-jacobs-t-shirts-settled/
