This image - a drawing of a smiling face - is from an actual federal trademark registration. U.S. Trademark No. 1,809,410 to be precise. It was registered in 1993 byEat'n Park Restaurants of Pennsylvania for "baked goods; namely, cookies." In other words, Eat'n Park sells smiley-faced cookies in its restaurants.

Cookies By Design, the trade name for Texas-based Crumb Corps, LLC, also sells smiley-faced cookies as part of its mail-order "cookie bouquets." The company has been in business since 1983 and began franchising in 1987.

Eat'n Park sued Crumb Corps in federal court on December 31, alleging multiple counts of trademark infringement, trademark dilution, and unfair competition.

Eat'n Park claims ownership of not just the smiley-face design but the word "SMILEY" itself when used in conjunction with the sale of cookies. Under U.S. Trademark No. 2,108,164, Eat'n Park's intellectual property rights include the use of "SMILEY" to describe any "sugar cookie having raised design of a smiling face sold in restaurants for consumption on or off the premises." Eat'n Park has a third trademark that also covers pancakes. No word on who controls smiley-faced waffles.

According to Eat'n Park's federal complaint, 

 

Crumb Corps sells and offers for sale a smiling face cookie, under the name "Smiley Faces" which includes a design that is confusingly similat to the registered trademark of Eat'n Park. Crumb Corps's "Smiley Faces" design cookies are directly competitive products to the Eat'n Park SMILEY smiling face cookies. Upon information and belief, the Crumb Corps smiling face design cookies are available via retail stores, catalogs, and the Internet. Eat'n Park has requested that Crumb Corps cease its use of this registered design and the registered trademark SMILEY. Crumb Corps has refused.

Eat'n Park cries it's been irreparably harmed by the "likely confusion" arising from two companies selling similar-though-not-identical products. Eat'n Park says it's concerned about customers who might inadvertently believe that Crumb Corps' "Smiley Faces" cookies are actually "SMILEY" cookies. And the best way to protect consumers is to ban the competition. Then there will be no doubt who makes smiley-faced cookies in this country.

(Originally published at Mises Economics Blog.)