Are individual emoji characters protected by copyright, or are they in the public domain for use on tangible goods?
It would depend upon the individual emoji. I would expect most are copyrighted.
It would depend upon the individual emoji. I would expect most are copyrighted.
Certainly the emoji shown in the international standard are in the public domain:
http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1F300.pdf
As for those you see displayed on your Mac in color, you would need to check the license of the Apple Color Emoji font.
Note that the article that Tom referred to included this statement
"The Unicode Standard 7.0, Copyright © 1991-2014 Unicode, Inc. All rights reserved.".
I was totally wrong, Illaass is right. While all the data (names, numbers, etc) connected to emoji are essentially public domain, the PDF charts are not. The rights to the glyphs used there to represent the emoji characters belong the organizations that contributed them, as stated at
Are individual emoji characters protected by copyright, or are they in the public domain for use on tangible goods?
