Nirvana’s smiley face lawsuit against Marc Jacobs will continue

A judge has denied a motion to dismiss the band’s claims against the Bootleg Redux Grunge line.

November 14, 2019
Nirvana’s smiley face lawsuit against Marc Jacobs will continue MLADEN ANTONOV / Getty

Nirvana’s lawsuit against Marc Jacobs will proceed, a California judge has ruled, according to Hollywood Reporter. The copyright infringement lawsuit concerns Marc Jacobs’ “Bootleg Redux Grunge” clothing line, which bears a striking similarity to Nirvana’s famous smiley face logo. In similar coloration and font, the Jacobs shirts replace the word Nirvana with smiley face’s X eyes with “M” and “J.” The band’s December 2018 filing accused Marc Jacobs of “mislead[ing] the public into falsely believing that Nirvana endorses the entire ‘Bootleg Redux Grunge’ collection… when Nirvana has not done so,” according to Rolling Stone.

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The fashion label had reportedly asked for the suit to be dismissed for a variety of technical reasons, including that they had sufficiently altered the logo to avoid a violation. However, denying the motion to dismiss, the judge wrote: “the issue presented as to likelihood of confusion is not whether the marks are identical. It is whether they are sufficiently similar ‘in their entirety’ to make confusion likely.”

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Nirvana’s smiley face lawsuit against Marc Jacobs will continue