Let’s say you really love a the emoji of the poop with the eyeballs. What you can’t necessarily do, however, is reproduce those emoji on a product. You can use those emoji to say or communicate whatever you want. This is why emoji may look different on different devices. So the emoji that appear on your iPhone or Android keyboard are used under that set of legal arrangements. For now, it will suffice to say that computerized fonts are protected by copyright (as they are, effectively, software.)Īpple and other producers of digital devices either create, buy, or license the fonts included in their software. Copyright protection for fonts (or typefaces) is a bit of a complex issue that probably merits its own blog post. In one sense, a group of emoji are just a fonts: a series of images that, individually or together, communicate some information. So the short answer is that yes, there is such thing as an “emoji copyright.” More accurately, emoji can be and are protected by copyright. If you create a drawing of a smiley face, it’s protected by copyright…declaring it an “emoji” doesn’t change that. Emoji are just graphic works by another name. In the U.S., as in most countries, copyright applies automatically when a copyrightable “work” is created and fixed in some tangible form, including digital formats. The Japanese spelling is 絵文字: 絵 (e) means ‘picture’ and 文字 (moji) means ‘letter.’ Picture letters. “Emoji” is a Japanese word (which is, apparently, why the plural is also “emoji,” not “emojis.”) From a useful article on emoji licensing: Need a copyright refresher? Click here to listen to my podcast episode on copyrights. Let’s answer some emoji copyright questions. But, as with any other digital asset, just because everyone uses emoji doesn’t mean there aren’t some rules to follow. In fact, I’m wondering why I’m even bothering to write this blog post with the boring old English alphabet.
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