| > Apple's Emoji designs are copyrighted to Apple. They aren't copying the emoji, though, except in the extremely pedantic sense that some transient copies get created in the process of the device displaying the fonts that it shipped with, but that is obvious fair use even under the most restrictive interpretation of fair use. Copyright has no bearing on this. > If people started using Apple's logos on the App's UI, they would respond in exactly the same way. That's a trademark issue. Apple's logo is an Apple trademark. It strains credulity to imagine that every emoji that ships with an iPhone is an Apple trademark. No reasonable consumer would see an Apple smiley face emoji in isolation and think "Oh, that's an Apple smiley face emoji not a Microsoft smiley face emoji, so that product must be made by Apple". Trademark only applies when there is a reasonable possibility of marketplace confusion. > And if they're so invested in using emojis as a "key marketing strategy", why didn't they pay an artist to create emojis for their own use? Pretty much every company uses some combination of characters as a key marketing strategy (the company or product name). Do they need to create their own font to be able to display their name? Obviously Apple can make its own rules and doesn't have to justify them, but I have a very hard time interpreting this rule in any way that isn't extremely arbitrary and nonsensical. |
No, but they do have to use a font with a license that permits you to do so. You can't just type your company name in Helvetica and go with it, Linotype will want to have a fee. (often a one-time non-recurring payment)