A authorized battle over Nirvana‘s iconic smiley face emblem will finish in a settlement, resolving years of sprawling litigation between the band, dressmaker Marc Jacobs and a former Geffen Records artwork designer who claims he created it.

In a discover filed in Los Angeles federal court docket on Tuesday, attorneys for all three sides mentioned that they had accepted a mediator’s proposal to finish the long-running case over the brand, which has appeared on numerous t-shirts and different merch within the years since Kurt Cobain’s loss of life.

Attorneys informed Judge John A. Kronstadt that they might formalize the settlement inside 21 days, and the decide later eliminated all upcoming hearings and different deadlines. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, and both sides didn’t return a request for remark.

Nirvana’s emblem – a yellow smiley face with X’d-out eyes — first appeared throughout promotion for 1991’s Nevermind. The design finally turned one thing of an unofficial emblem for the band, and has develop into significantly outstanding once more lately amid a wave of 90s nostalgia amongst youthful music followers.

The band’s attorneys first sued Marc Jacobs in 2018, accusing the design home of utilizing a look-alike picture on a line of its personal t-shirts and different attire referred to as “Bootleg Redux Grunge.” They mentioned Jacobs had simply changed “Nirvana” with the phrase “Heaven” and changed the 2 eyes with an “M” and a “J,” however had modified little else.

“Defendants’ use of Nirvana’s copyrighted image on and to promote its products is intentional, and is part and parcel of a wider campaign to associate [the Grunge line] with Nirvana, one of the founders of the ‘grunge’ musical genre,” the band’s attorneys wrote on the time.

In their preliminary grievance, Nirvana’s attorneys mentioned the smiley face had been created by the late Cobain – the traditional knowledge for many years concerning the emblem’s origins. But quickly after the case was filed, a former Geffen artwork director named Robert Fisher jumped into the case: “It is, in fact, Mr. Fisher, who authored the Happy Face, not Mr. Kurt Cobain.”

“For 30 years now, Nirvana has reaped enormous profits from Mr. Fisher’s works through the sale of a wide range of products,” his attorneys wrote. “Assisted by a team of lawyers and managers, Nirvana was able to do so without any compensation to Mr. Fisher by falsely claiming authorship and ownership.”

Since Fisher entered the case, the band’s attorneys have staunchly maintained that it was Cobain who designed the picture. At the very least, they’ve argued, if it was Fisher who created the picture, he did so when he was employed by Geffen on the time – that means it was a “work for hire” and the label retained all rights to the picture.

In December, Judge Kronstadt largely agreed with Nirvana on that subject. Fisher later sought to enchantment that ruling, however the decide denied that movement final month, saying he would want to attend till after Nirvana and Marc Jacobs went to trial to file an enchantment.