Comments on: Comments on 6978

Post number 6978

dchase — Fri, 13 Apr 2001 05:13:40 -0800

:( Harvey Ball, creator of the smiley face died yesterday. He was paid $45 for designing it for an insurance company. Neither he nor the insurance company bothered to copyright it, and the rest is history.

By: MrMoonPie

MrMoonPie — Fri, 13 Apr 2001 07:43:49 -0800

You MUST check out the Smiley Face Song, the official theme song of the World Smile Corporation, sponsors of World Smile Day.

By: ParisParamus

ParisParamus — Fri, 13 Apr 2001 08:00:40 -0800

I'm not sure to what extent you could copyright : )

By: MarkAnd

MarkAnd — Fri, 13 Apr 2001 08:13:00 -0800

Paris Paramus: He didn't invent the emoticon, he invented the big yellow circle with the two eyes and the mouth.

By: MarkAnd

MarkAnd — Fri, 13 Apr 2001 08:13:33 -0800

Hmm, replace "invent" with "create"

By: briank

briank — Fri, 13 Apr 2001 08:26:10 -0800

You'll recall that Despair.com recently "copyrighted" :-(

By: ParisParamus

ParisParamus — Fri, 13 Apr 2001 08:49:20 -0800

I think that despair thing is a joke, right? In any case, it was a great PR move.

By: briank

briank — Fri, 13 Apr 2001 08:50:06 -0800

Yes, it was a joke.

By: dhartung

dhartung — Fri, 13 Apr 2001 09:17:13 -0800

It may have been a joke, but it does happen to be a real trademark. Also note that these are things that are TRADEMARKED and not COPYRIGHTED. Similar but not the same. Big differences in the way the law is applied. You would probably have trouble copyrighting a two-character work, but you can certainly trademark it ... as Despair proved. Why do half the people on the net get this wrong again and again?

By: ParisParamus

ParisParamus — Fri, 13 Apr 2001 09:25:37 -0800

For what it's worth, :- ( is arguably a lot more protectable than just : ) or : (. But I suspect no one will ever spend the $ to prosecute or defend ownership.

By: Skot

Skot — Fri, 13 Apr 2001 09:36:00 -0800

[dhartung]: Why do half the people on the net get this wrong again and again? I think it's more than half, and I doubt it's just people on the net. We get it wrong because it's confusing. And, as you point out, they are similar. And likely because for most of us, they rarely have any relevance to our personal lives. I see at the bottom of MetaFilter that all my posts are copyrighted by me, but really, I'm confident that this will never be an issue. You might as well ask, Why do half the people on the net get the Uncertainty Principle wrong again and again?

By: baylink

baylink — Fri, 13 Apr 2001 10:23:19 -0800

And, for what it's worth, the "original" smiley face; that *particular* arrangement of the eyes and mouth, of those sizes and with those serifs, in yellow, is artwork, and could in fact be copyrighted, which is *not* true of the emoticon. And hey, Skot: stop picking on me. :-)

By: baylink

baylink — Fri, 13 Apr 2001 10:25:27 -0800

Oh, and kudos to dchase for the best lead of the week.

By: Skot

Skot — Fri, 13 Apr 2001 11:39:07 -0800

run: autoexe.stalk.baylink.pounce ;)

By: mikeyb

mikeyb — Fri, 13 Apr 2001 17:53:55 -0800

You know what all this really means.. Forrest Gump was only partially true.

By: rodii

rodii — Fri, 13 Apr 2001 20:17:31 -0800

:-(

By: davidmsc

davidmsc — Fri, 13 Apr 2001 21:34:56 -0800

Love that lil' smiley face. It evokes (for me) almost entirely positive images of the 60s/70s (free speech, early disco, rise of consumerism) with few, if any, of the negative aspects (drugs, Beatles, etc). Yes, I'm serious.