Marc Jacobs rejects Nirvana ‘smiley face’ copyright claim
Fashion brand Marc Jacobs has asked a court to dismiss a copyright infringement suit after the company representing former rock band Nirvana accused it of using a logo without authorisation.
The motion, filed March 8 at the US District Court for the Central District of California, said Nirvana LLC’s “egregious” complaint made claims that were “factually unsupported”.
In December 2018, Nirvana LLC alleged that Marc Jacobs had stolen the band’s copyright-protected ‘smiley face’ logo. The logo, which features the letter ‘x’ in place of each eye and a tongue sticking out of the mouth, was registered for copyright in 1993.
In its latest filing, Marc Jacobs said Nirvana’s complaint “stems from the false premise that it owns a US copyright registration on a smiley face design”. The fashion house said the face is “merely a fraction of the full artwork covered by the registration”.
Nirvana’s registration covers three elements: the smiley face in dispute, the word ‘NIRVANA’ written above the smiley face and the words ‘flower sniffin kitty pettin baby kissin corporate rock whores’ with a horizontal line above them.
“Thus, Nirvana LLC does not own a copyright registration for just the x-eye smiley face, despite referring to that image as copyrighted several times in its complaint,” said Marc Jacobs, which also disputed the ownership of the artwork.
While Nirvana LLC had alleged that Cobain created the smiley face in 1991, Marc Jacobs said the copyright for the registration lists Nirvana Inc as both the author and the copyright claimant.
It said Nirvana LLC failed to state how or whether it obtained rights to the artwork from Cobain, and who was the creator of the other elements of the registration.
The fashion brand also said Nirvana’s suit should be dismissed for “failure to state a claim”.
It said Nirvana LLC failed to state which elements of Marc Jacobs’ products were “extrinsically similar to any protectable elements” of its copyright-protected logo.
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