Laugh Now was first commissioned as a mural by the Ocean Rooms Nightclub on Morley Street in Brighton in 2002. It was originally a six-meter-long spray-painted work, with the figure of the monkey repeated ten times, with six of them disseminating a direct message on their sandwich boards: “Laugh now, but one day we’ll be in charge.”
Back in May 2021, Banksy lost a second trademark case over his ‘Laugh Now’ monkey image that was first filed by Pest Control in November 2018 - this followed the loss of his Flower Thrower trademark in September of the year prior. With the European Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) ruling in favour of the greeting card company, Full Colour Black, who formally opposed the trademark in 2019 claiming it was filed in “bad faith” and that the work was non-distinctive. In the earlier hearing over the trademark of the Flower Thrower image, there was a case made against its copyright validity as Banksy maintains complete anonymity.