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Apple won't approve apps that use emojis that aren't provided by the keyboard

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Re: Apple won't approve apps that use emojis that aren't provided by the keyboard

#31

Post by tinus_hn »

cbuq wrote: post #17
sxates wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in the US, fonts can not by copyrighted [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protecti...

"the shapes of typefaces are not copyrightable, though the shapes may be protected by design patent ... A font (the computer code used to display the typeface) may be protected as copyright" So practically, they are copyrighted. Are you going to redesign the TrueType font from scratch?

If you render the shapes to a bitmap, you own the compete copyright to that bitmap.

Re: Apple won't approve apps that use emojis that aren't provided by the keyboard

#32

Post by TheCoelacanth »

stock_toaster wrote: post #16
dTal wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The practical upshot of such a policy would be everyone shipping their own fonts instead of using Apple's system fonts, just to be safe. This would be nothing but trouble - bloated app sizes, more ram pressure, uneven look and feel, and diminished influence on Unicode. A now-deleted tweet by a different developer facing the same issue stated that Apple apparently clarified by saying that using emoji as "media" was fo…

> using emoji as "media" was forbidden, but "content" was okay. Whatever that means From what I read other places, it meant that if it was non-variable and shipped with the app (UI, app data, etc) then it was "media" and not ok. If it was user supplied (like a text message), externally loaded (web page), etc... then it was "content" and ok.

So if a users presses a button that says "Do X":

Then the app sends a request to a server to do X and based on the response looks up the text that shipped with the app saying "X completed successfully" which it displays using the system font, that is fine.

Then the app sends a request to a server to do X and the server sends back the text "X completed successfully " and the app displays it using the system font, that is fine.

Then the app sends a request to a server to do X and based on the response looks up the text that shipped with the app saying "X completed successfully " which it displays using the system font, that is against the rules.

That seems incredibly arbitrary and nonsensical if that is an accurate description of the rule.

Re: Apple won't approve apps that use emojis that aren't provided by the keyboard

#33

Post by TheCoelacanth »

princekolt wrote: post #9

Apple's Emoji designs are copyrighted to Apple. The unicode standard only defines character codes, and what they should "generally" look like (hell, Unicode's own example designs are monochrome line drawings). So this makes complete sense. If people started using Apple's logos on the App's UI, they would respond in exactly the same way. And if they're so invested in using emojis as a "key marketing strategy", why did…

> 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.

Re: Apple won't approve apps that use emojis that aren't provided by the keyboard

#34

Post by wlesieutre »

tinus_hn wrote: post #30
wlesieutre wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple also owns the copyright on their San Fransisco font, but you don't see them blocking approval on apps for having text in the UI. The Roman alphabet only defines what letters should "generally" look like, so it would make sense. You want graphical representations of letters? Bring your own. Those ones are Apple's.

Emoji are images, not letters. You can’t copyright letter shapes, but you can copyright images.

From the wikipedia link in sibling comment:

> The 1976 House Report states: A "typeface" can be defined as a set of letters, numbers, or other symbolic characters, whose forms are related by repeating design elements consistently applied in a notational system, and are intended to be embodied in articles whose intrinsic utilitarian function is for use in composing text or other cognizable combinations of characters. The Committee does not regard the design of typeface, as thus defined, to be a copyrightable "pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work" within the meaning of this bill and the application of the dividing line in section 101 [H.R. Reg. No. 1476, 94th Cong., 2nd Sess 5 (1976)].

Emoji might not be "text," but would you consider them to be used for "composing other cognizable combinations of characters"?

They're definitely cognizable, and the original proposal to add them to Unicode straight up calls them "characters" repeatedly.

> The proposal for encoding of Emoji symbols as Unicode characters covers the Emoji symbols that are in widespread use by DoCoMo, KDDI and Softbank for their mobile phone networks. These symbols are encoded in carrier-specific versions of Shift-JIS (as User-Defined Characters), and, in the case of KDDI, in a carrier-specific version of ISO-2022-JP. There are mapping tables in use in the industry between these character sets, with both roundtrip and fallback mappings. These symbols are also supported in web mail services by Yahoo! Mail and Google Mail. (Yahoo! Mail currently supports a subset.) (The original proposal also included nine symbols defined by Google, but they were withdrawn from later versions.)

https://sites.google.com/site/unicodesymbols/Home/emoji-symb...

But maybe given characters in a font that were more pictorial in nature, the House Report would have had something else to say about it. Who knows?

Another question in there is the first part, are the forms related by repeating design elements consistently applied in a notational system? Maybe not? The sets of smilies in each company's emoji font totally are, but other items like poop are not.

Anyway, I took a quick look for any legal opinions on the copyright of emoji sets and didn't come up with much. I wouldn't be surprised if they're copyrightable, unlike the text portions of fonts, but it's pretty disappointing if the expressions of these common communicative symbols are locked up behind copyright.

Re: Apple won't approve apps that use emojis that aren't provided by the keyboard

#35

Post by wlesieutre »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #32
stock_toaster wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> using emoji as "media" was forbidden, but "content" was okay. Whatever that means From what I read other places, it meant that if it was non-variable and shipped with the app (UI, app data, etc) then it was "media" and not ok. If it was user supplied (like a text message), externally loaded (web page), etc... then it was "content" and ok.

So if a users presses a button that says "Do X": Then the app sends a request to a server to do X and based on the response looks up the text that shipped with the app saying "X completed successfully" which it displays using the system font, that is fine. Then the app sends a request to a server to do X and the server sends back the text "X completed successfully " and the app displays it using the system font, that…

The minor use that occurred to me is Slack's "You're all up to date :tada:" when you pull up at the bottom of a channel to load new messages.

Another link was posted suggesting that Apple's reversed this stance. If not for that, would Apple have been making Slack get rid of the party popper because the user didn't type it? It sounds like yes.

Re: Apple won't approve apps that use emojis that aren't provided by the keyboard

#37

Post by gregknicholson »

trevyn wrote: post #25
dTal wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The practical upshot of such a policy would be everyone shipping their own fonts instead of using Apple's system fonts, just to be safe. This would be nothing but trouble - bloated app sizes, more ram pressure, uneven look and feel, and diminished influence on Unicode. A now-deleted tweet by a different developer facing the same issue stated that Apple apparently clarified by saying that using emoji as "media" was fo…

> Apple thinks of Unicode as their personal playground Apple has thought of Earth as their personal playground for a long time; arrogance runs deep in their company culture. Steve could get away with it because he was arrogant and right most of the time. Today, ancient & obsolete arrogance is Apple’s biggest flaw, and is causing them to drift more and more out of touch with reality.

Apple seems to avoid interoperability wherever they think they can get away with it.

Even in really weird ways, like: to install any software on your Apple phone you had to use Apple's music player. (Is that right? I never owned one, and it sounds daft, but plausible for Apple.)

Text and video messaging was low-hanging fruit, thanks to XMPP etc not taking off. With that network effect in place, it's a short leap towards a subtly-incompatible text format, so buying Apple's stuff becomes the path of slightly less resistance.

I don't know whether this is an aggressive strategy; or whether they care only about their customers' satisfaction and not at all about interoperability.

Re: Apple won't approve apps that use emojis that aren't provided by the keyboard

#38

Post by gregknicholson »

manicdee wrote: post #22
kazinator wrote: post #6

> Means if your app displays emoji anywhere without a user having it typed in, it’s illegal and will be rejected. How does that work in a chat app, when the remote user has typed that in on their device?

The distinction is whether you are using the emoji as a UX asset or simply displaying it as part of the interaction between user and app. User enters emoji in their secret diary: great. You allow selection of mood for today by displaying a range of emoji faces: bad

So Facebook can't use the thumbs up emoji as a button label any more?

Or is that OK because it's an "image", not an "emoji", despite carrying the exact same meaning as the emoji, and looking indistinguishable from a rendering of the emoji?

Or is it OK if they bring their own image file? What if they bring their own emoji font and use that, to improve rendering speed?

Re: Apple won't approve apps that use emojis that aren't provided by the keyboard

#39

Post by yoz-y »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #33
princekolt wrote: post #9

Apple's Emoji designs are copyrighted to Apple. The unicode standard only defines character codes, and what they should "generally" look like (hell, Unicode's own example designs are monochrome line drawings). So this makes complete sense. If people started using Apple's logos on the App's UI, they would respond in exactly the same way. And if they're so invested in using emojis as a "key marketing strategy", why did…

> 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, t…

> 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?

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)

Re: Apple won't approve apps that use emojis that aren't provided by the keyboard

#40

Post by yoz-y »

bhhaskin wrote: post #11
brazzledazzle wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can change the type of emoji Slack uses.

Not any more. [0] [0] https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/202931348-Emoji-and...

What prompted this? Is there some Apple rule that you can not use a custom font for the emoji keypoints? If so, combined with the "no apple emoji" in interface rule, then it is a real bummer.
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