Tracy Hinson (KSDK), Hunter Bassler, Kelsi Anderson, KSDK; Smiley Face Cookie Company, served with cease and desist letter, fights to keep its name and design
"The bakery received a cease and desist letter from Pennsylvania in early 2016, but it was disregarded. A smiley face cookie they started baking in the 70s became the icon for the bakery's adults with disabilities job program in 2021.
"We pretty much kind of ignored that letter and just thought, 'Hey, we have precedence, so we can keep making these cookies,'" Rinaberger said. "We received a second one in 2022, never heard from the trademark owners until recently when we received an email following up from their attorneys asking what our action plans were to stop calling them smiley cookies."
In a statement to 5 On Your Side, Pennsylvania's Eat'nPark management said they own the federally registered trademarks for Smiley as it relates to cookies, and for the iconic Smiley Face design they've been using on cookies since the 1980s.
What the St. Louis company is worried about most is losing the recognition of seeing Smiley Face Cookie Company in local stores.
"One of the areas that we think we have precedence, besides us doing it before they had their trademark, is it's becoming quite generic and there are hundreds of bakeries around the United States making smile cookies and calling them either smiley face cookies or smile cookies," Rinaberger said.
And for those reasons, they aren't going to let Smiley Face Cookie Company crumble. There is a GoFundMe set up to help with the Smiley Face Cookie Company's legal expenses.
An Eat'nPark spokesperson sent the following statement to 5 On Your Side:
"McArthur’s Bakery is doing important and meaningful work, and we respect their mission. For some time, however, we had reached out to McArthur’s Bakery to engage in a conversation about our trademarks. Unfortunately, they ignored our outreach and our efforts to initiate good-faith conversations."
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