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Who Really Created Nirvana’s Smiley Face Logo? An Appeals Court Might Weigh In Soon

The grunge band is locked in a three-way intellectual property war with a fashion designer and a former record label employee over the lucrative image.

A years-long legal fight over Nirvana ‘s iconic smiley face logo could be headed for a major showdown, sparked by a former record label art designer who says he, not Kurt Cobain, created the famed drawing. “Wanting to stick with a circular design, he started playing around with variations of the smiley faces that he used to draw in his final year at [college], when acid culture was at its peak,” Fisher’s lawyers wrote. After the lawsuit against Marc Jacobs was filed, Fisher says he originally took his story to the band, assuming it would “help” their lawyers to understand his involvement in the creation of the smiley logo.

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