The Smiley Licensing Company has been busy wiping the smiles of the
faces of agencies using the familiar logo in ads. Not that it wants to
stop them. Quite the reverse. It just wants payment for its permission.
This has dismayed the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising which
never believed that replicating a circle, two dots and a curved line
could amount to a breach of copyright. But when a shrewd operator in
search of an easy buck becomes involved, different rules apply.