Are emojis copyrighted?

What emoji copyright actually covers

Are emojis copyrighted? The answer is yes, but not the emoji as a concept. Each emoji icon is a digital image, and like any digital image, the specific artwork can be protected by copyright. The Unicode Consortium defines the code points and names, but platforms create their own visual designs for each character.

For example, the grinning face emoji 😀 is U+1F600 in the Unicode Standard. Apple, Google, Samsung, and other vendors each draw that face differently. Those drawings are the property of the company that produced them, and they hold the copyright to their particular versions.

This means you cannot simply copy Apple’s emoji images and use them in your own app without permission. You can, however, create your own version of a grinning face that matches the same code point, as long as you don’t copy someone else’s artwork. See how the same emoji looks on different platforms.

Who owns the rights?

The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit that standardises emoji code points across devices. It does not own the visual designs; it only maintains the list of characters and their meanings. When new emojis are approved, vendors draw their own interpretations.

Apple’s emoji set (Apple Color Emoji) is protected under Apple’s copyright and licence terms. Google’s Noto Emoji is open source under the Apache 2.0 licence, meaning you can use it more freely, but you must include the licence notice. Other vendors like Microsoft and Samsung have their own fonts with varying terms.

The names and code points themselves are not copyrightable, but the specific glyphs are. So the concept of a smiling face is free for anyone to draw, but the exact pixels of Apple’s smile are not.

Using emojis in your projects

For everyday personal communication, there are no copyright concerns. When you send a message with 😀, you are not reproducing the image for distribution; you are simply using the font that came with your device. The licence for that font typically covers normal use.

Problems arise when you want to use emoji images in a product, website, or advertisement. If you copy the images from a platform and redistribute them, you may be infringing copyright. Instead, you should either use an open-source emoji set with appropriate attribution, or license a commercial set.

Open-source emoji sets

• Noto Emoji (Google) – Apache 2.0, free for commercial use
• Twemoji (Twitter/X) – CC-BY 4.0, requires attribution
• OpenMoji – CC BY-SA 4.0, share-alike

Some companies sell licensed emoji packs for commercial use. If you’re unsure, check the licence of the specific emoji font you’re using.

Trademark vs copyright

While copyright protects the artwork, trademark protects brand identity. Individual emoji are generally not trademarked, though platform names and logos may be. The word “emoji” itself is not a registered trademark, and you can use it to describe your own emoji set.

The Unicode Consortium holds trademarks on the Unicode name and logo, but not on individual characters. So you can call your own set “emoji”, but you can’t use the Unicode logo without permission.

In short, copyright stops you from copying the pictures, while trademark stops you from confusing consumers about the source. For most people, the copyright aspect is the one to watch.

Questions people ask