NY Times: ‘Smiley Face Is Serious To Company’ Story of the Loufrani family, which owns trademark registrations to the ‘smiley face’ around the world. If you have tiume to kill, you can go to TTABVue and use ‘Loufrani’ as a search term, to pull up dockets for its various oppositions against the likes of Wal-Mart.
The article claims that the smiley face was created by Harvey Wall in 1965 (and doesn’t credit Forrest Gump). Loufrani reportedly filed in the U.S. in 1997, Wal-Mart reportedly used the mark in 1996.