From: Jukka K. Korpela (jkorpela@cs.tut.fi)
Date: Mon Jan 12 2009 - 12:35:46 CST
Peter Constable wrote:
> From: unicode-bounce@unicode.org [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org]
> On Behalf Of André Szabolcs Szelp
>
>> Isn't the whole interoperability argument, as an argument, void
>> already by the exclusion of corporate logos? (which are clearly
>> disallowed by Unicode policy, but are an integral part of the
>> original emoji set).
>
> No, it is not. Corporate logos are necessarily excluded for legal /
> IP reasons, whether they're in this set or any other potential
> source. But that doesn't mean that all the other entities in a source
> set can't be accommodated.
The whole case of "corporate logos" (actually, registered symbols of
companies - they're largely not logos, really) is a lawyers' case rather
than a legal case. There are many lawyers who give advice based on their
exaggerated fears of what might result from the use of "trademarked"
symbols. I don't think they can back up their claims with anything but
additional claims and speculation.
There's not much practical harm caused by the exclusion of "logos", but it's
pointless and even ridiculous - an unnecessary exception.
It constitutes no trademark violation to encode a trademark as a character.
It would constitute a trademark violation to _use_ a trademark in
merchandise without a permission of the trademark owner, and this is true
independently of the manner (characters, images, sounds, etc.) of expressing
a trademark.
-- Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
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