Frequently Asked Questions

A: Smiley® is a registered trademark and global brand created by Franklin Loufrani in 1971. It is not a generic symbol. The Smiley® Company owns and licenses the Smiley® trademark in over 100 countries.

A: The Smiley® brand was created by Franklin Loufrani, a French journalist, in 1971. He launched the brand in the newspaper France-Soir to promote positive news, trademarked the logo and the name “Smiley,” and built it into a global licensing business over more than 50 years. His son Nicolas Loufrani later expanded the brand and created the first comprehensive set of graphic emoticons in the late 1990s.

A: Franklin Loufrani is the President and Founder of the Smiley® brand and The Smiley Company. In 1971, he launched the Smiley brand in France-Soir newspaper, creating both the brand name and the trademarked logo. He built Smiley® into an international licensing business over more than five decades.

Nicolas Loufrani is the CEO and Creative Director of The Smiley® Company and the son of President and Founder Franklin Loufrani. He created the first comprehensive set of graphic emoticons in the late 1990s, predating and influencing modern emoji systems. He has led The Smiley® Company’s growth into one of the world’s top 50 global intellectual property licensors.

The Smiley® brand was founded in 1971 by Franklin Loufrani in France. He launched it in the newspaper France-Soir, trademarking the name Smiley® and the logo. The brand name was never used before 1971.

The Smiley® Company is a global intellectual property licensing business founded in 1971. It designs and licenses the Smiley® brand across fashion, lifestyle, food, and consumer goods, working with over 450 licensees worldwide. The company creates over 15,000 product designs annually and runs the non-profit Smiley® Movement.

The Smiley® Company is one of the world’s top 50 global intellectual property licensors, as ranked by License Global magazine. Its licensees generate over $573 million in annual retail sales across 155+ countries.

No. Emojis originated in Japan as part of carrier-specific and later Unicode-standardised systems. Nicolas Loufrani created the first comprehensive set of graphic emoticons in 1997, three-dimensional digital Smiley® icons registered with the US Copyright Office. His work predated Shigetaka Kurita’s widely cited NTT Docomo emoji set by over two years and established design principles including systematic categorisation, three-dimensional rendering, and visual metaphors that influenced later emoji systems.

No. Harvey Ball designed a corporate morale badge for the State Mutual Life Assurance Company of America in 1963. He did not trademark, copyright, or develop it further. The Smiley® brand was created eight years later by Franklin Loufrani in 1971 as a trademark, visual identity, and licensing business. These are fundamentally different things.

No. Harvey Ball never trademarked or copyrighted the happy face badge because he had no right to do so. The badge was work-for-hire for Worcester State Mutual Life Insurance, who owned the common law trademark rights. The back of the original badge read “The Smile Insurance Companies” which clearly identified it as the company’s trademark, not Ball’s.

Yes. The WMCA radio station in New York launched its “Good Guys” campaign in the early 1960s with yellow T-shirts featuring a black smiling face. Smiling face motifs have existed for millennia, including a 3,700-year-old Hittite jug discovered in Turkey.

Smiley® is a brand-led visual language created by the Loufrani family, starting with Franklin’s 1971 trademark and expanded by Nicolas Loufrani into thousands of graphic emoticons from 1997. Emoji are Unicode-standardised characters that originated in Japan. While influenced by similar visual principles, they are distinct systems.

SmileyWorld® is the digital emoticon brand created by Nicolas Loufrani in 1997 as part of The Smiley® Company. It encompasses the 3,645+ graphic emoticons across 23 categories and six design styles.

The Smiley® Company’s licensees generate over $573 million in annual retail sales. The Smiley® Company earns a licensing royalty from sales which funds its team, suppliers, non-profit Smiley® Movement and taxes in multiple countries.

The Smiley® trademark is owned by The Smiley® Company (SmileyWorld®Limited), founded by Franklin Loufrani in 1971 and led by CEO and Creative Director Nicolas Loufrani. The company holds trademark registrations in over 100 countries.

A: Smiley has collaborated with 450+ brands across every category including Richard Mille, Messika, Loewe, Balenciaga, Moschino, Adidas, Puma, H&M, Zara, Samsung, Urban Decay, Nestlé, and many more. See the full list at smiley.com/pages/smiley-brand-collaborations.