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Quite simply, Apple Color Emoji isn’t licensed. They could have chosen one of the free emoji fonts like Noto Emoji, or if they don’t like any of the existing fr
by oefrha 4y ago
Quite simply, Apple Color Emoji isn’t licensed. They could have chosen one of the free emoji fonts like Noto Emoji, or if they don’t like any of the existing free ones, commission their own. Instead they chose to adapt an unlicensed proprietary font.
> This is a puzzling move on Apple’s behalf…
Hardly puzzling. What’s puzzling is their developers and designers seem to have never heard of licenses on artwork. And no, “your emojis are boring and we’re making them awesome” is not a valid copyright infringement defense.
- GlitchMr 4y agoTechnically it may not be a copyright infringement - whether emojis can be copyrighted is quite complicated. However, this is irrelevant as App Store Review guidelines say the following. > Apps may use Unicode characters that render as Apple emoji in their app and app metadata. Apple emoji may not be used on other platforms or embedded directly in your app binary.
- oefrha 4y agoSaying Apple Color Emoji the font, basically a collection of images, can’t be copyrighted is like saying Helvetica can’t be copyrighted.
- GlitchMr 4y agoHelvetica typeface cannot be copyrighted in United States, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protection_of_typefaces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protecti...
- tragictrash 4y agoSo... Correct?
- Someone 4y agoI don’t see why they would have to embed Apple’s font in their app. What’s at stake, IMO, more likely is that they created a derived work from Apple’s emoji, while Apple doesn’t approve of that. (I won’t make any claim here w.r.t. whether that is or should be forbidden)
- aaomidi 4y agoThe problem here is that generally this is decide by courts, not by apple. This is basically yet another piece of evidence of a monopoly. Apple acting as the judge, jury, and executioner regarding what it thinks is “it’s rights”