Trollface

Trollface is a rage comic character wearing a mischievous smile that is meant to represent the facial expression of an Internet troll. The image is most commonly used to portray a character as a troll in rage comics, or alternatively, to identify oneself or another participant as such in online discussions.

Origin
The Trollface was originally drawn by Carlos Ramirez, an Oakland-based artist known by his DeviantART handle Whynne, as part of a MS Paint webcomic about the pointless nature of trolling on 4chan's /v/ (video games) board. The comic was uploaded to deviantART on September 19th, 2008.

In the deviantART post, Ramirez added a note revealing that he was attempting to draw a comic character known as the "Rape Rodent."

Spread
In the following months, Ramirez' drawing quick gained traction on 4chan as the universal emoticon of an Internet troll and a versatile rage comic character. For a brief time, the face became alternatively known as "the coolface" after a rage comic-style webcomic took off on 4chan and Ebaumsworld, though only for a brief period of time.

Throughout the first half of 2009, Trollface quickly gained favor with Redditors and rage comic artists in particular, in part owing to the rapid growth of the /r/f7u12 subreddit around that same time. On August 1st, 2009, the first Urban Dictionary definition for "trollface" was submitted by user A Terrible Driver. Thousands of additional webcomic and photoshopped instances featuring the face can be found Tumblr, Cheezburger, Reddit, Facebook, Quickmeme and Memegenerator among many others.

Copyright Infringement Dispute
On July 16th, 2011, a screenshot of an email sent to an undisclosed recipient from a man named Carlos Ramirez claiming to be Whynne was posted to Reddit. The email stated that the use of Trollface on Reddit violated his copyright on the image and requested the subreddit to be removed from the site.

The email was reposted to f7u12 in a thread titled "Looks like f7u12 is done". Then, a Redditor named Whynne reponded to the thread saying:

The background image for the f7u12 pages was changed to a picture of trollface with the text "HEY WHYNNE… U MAD BRO?".

On March 3rd, 2015, Meme Run, an endless-running 2D platformer video game featuring a plethora of internet meme references, including the Trollface, was removed from the Wii U eShop following the issuance of a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice from Ramirez as the copyright holder of the character.

Profitability of Trollface
On April 8th, 2015, Kotaku ran an in-depth interview article with Ramirez about his now-iconic rage comic character. In the article, the Trollface artist estimated that he has earned more than $100,000 in licensing fees, settlements and other payouts since registering with the U.S. Copyright Office in 2010, with monthly revenues reaching as high as $15,000 at its peak in popularity. In addition, Ramirez also offered a backstory behind the removal of Meme Run from Wii U eShop, quoted as saying: