Apple held up Telegram’s latest update over emoji
theverge.com
theverge.com
> 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.
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.
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)
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”
> He claims that the update is “about to revolutionize how people express themselves in messaging”
https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/11/23301864/telegram-founder...
Not so revolutionary in my opinion. Good way to spin an update delay to get some articles written about themselves though.
b) Emoji are copied from Apple emojis.
c) PR strategy is copied from the dozens of startups who also played this victim game.
Edit: I just found this: https://www.madonna.com/news/title/madonna-audibles-now-avai...
This guy talks like a press release.
> The update is loaded with other new emoji improvements, though. Users who subscribe to Telegram’s recently-launched $4.99 Premium service will be able to upload and use custom emoji in chats with friends, and Telegram is offering 10 custom packs with more than 500 emoji to start.
Actually, this whole article sounds like an advert. Has The Verge stooped so low they are now doing undisclosed advertorials?
As is their right.
And a circle, line and dot predates everything by centuries. So I guess all copyright is pointless.
Or maybe that's not the system works at all and it's based on infringing a specific design.
There are also jurisdictions which have a concept of "it must have a good enough quality to be worth of protection", in Germany we call it "Schöpfungshöhe" [1]. However, even a work (e.g. a logo) that doesn't fall under copyright protection due to that floor still may fall under trademark protection... but that's definitely not applicable for Unicode-standardized emoji.
Apple (and Microsoft, and Android, and Samsung, and...) ship designs based on standardized Unicode descriptions of emojis.
There's a reason Emojipedia lists multiple designs for each emoji. See e.g. https://emojipedia.org/grinning-face/
Edit: Gun is a better example, https://emojipedia.org/pistol/
https://www.wipo.int/wipo_magazine/en/2018/03/article_0006.h...
> emojis can raise potentially complex and serious legal issues, including novel and complicated questions about intellectual property
> copyright might protect individual emojis
So the question is far more open ended and complicated than your snide “So I guess all copyright is pointless” remark would make it seem. The complexity of the law is exactly what I was getting at. How much change is required to make it no longer Apple IP since the underlying emoji determinations are not even made by Apple, just adopted by them?
But that kinda is Apple's modus operandi. The left app store gatekeeper doesn't know what the right one approved or disapproved of last week, so you get smacked down seemingly randomly.
This is unambiguously copyright infringement, it is not at all “random” for Apple to enforce it in this case but to also allow animated emojis in other apps that do not steal their IP to include those features.
In the US https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protecti...
> Typefaces cannot be protected by copyright in the United States (Code of Federal Regulations, Ch 37, Sec. 202.1(e); Eltra Corp. vs. Ringer). The idea that typefaces cannot be copyrighted in the United States is black letter law since the introduction of 37 C.F.R. § 202.1(e) in 1992. Under U.S. law, typefaces and their letter forms or glyphs are considered utilitarian objects whose public utility outweighs any private interest in protecting their creative elements.
Do we have proof that it's due to the style similarities? So far all I've seen has been "Telegram complains X" and "Apple has not commented". I'm not familiar enough with Apple's emoji, nor does one short preview show enough detail on Telegram's, to accurately judge that... but it would certainly be contentious if they were seemingly "the same". If / when Apple animates their own, they'll certainly want to standardize across all apps, and that's something they're pretty consistent about.
On the other hand these new emojis look really cool. This almost feel like an ads.
I disagree. It feels like a painful return to early 2000s animated phpBB forum emoticons.
The thing is, Apple is infamous for holding up or rejecting application updates without providing clear transparency on why (e.g. "needs further review because we noticed something and need to clear that internally", "we're under backlog", "we suspect you violate rule XYZ") and no reasonable way to appeal to an external authority (=a legitimate court) in the case of a dispute, particularly if you are outside of teh US.
So far they were using the apple one across platforms, just to avoid "emoji misunderstandings" (when the emoji design is different, also the meaning can be interpreted differently - that's why is better for a common chat to use the same set).
Given the quality of Telegram UI and designers, I am sure they will do a very very good job.
Under what basis can an individual or company use emoji images outside of text-based messsges?
I frequently see ads that include large scaled up copies of Apple's emoji. Is that allowed?
On TikTok I see people illustrate their videos with huge emoji stickers. What's the copyright situation there?
People seem to treat Apple emoji like clip art. Can you do that? Does Apple offer any clarity anywhere on licensing terms?
I get annoyed when web apps mess with emojis instead of leaving them as the OS default (e.g. Facebook Messenger).
[1] https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/time-is-money-apple-...
DEFCON presentation
https://xn--fda.fr/defcon/DEF%20CON%2030%20-%20Hadrien%20Bar...
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/enforce-your-intellectu...
In any case, Apple is within their rights to assert that telemoji are an unlicensed derivative work of Apple's emoji, but they aren't compelled to enforce that to keep their copyright.