Friendly reminder to consider that #emoji can be subject to #copyright. So that means don’t use them without permission.
Reminded of this by an ad I saw on Twitter for a new movie that uses them to bleep out dogs cursing.
My go to resource on this subject is Eric Goldman’s blog. Here are two examples of some of his coverage of the issue:
It’s also important to remember that some emoji depictions by operating systems incorporate protected trademarks, such as Microsoft’s emoji set (called Fluent Emoji).
Be careful using some emoji that may contain a protected trademark.
Microsoft actually released their emoji collection (sans the ones that contain their trademarks) under an open source license.
You can download the assets on the GitHub repo 👉 https://github.com/microsoft/fluentui-emoji
The only issue with the Microsoft emoji is that they’re available under the MIT license.
Unclear how to practically include the MIT license and copyright notice if you use individual emoji (what would be deemed “software” under the license) in a video or still graphic 🤷🏻♂️
