Apple has trademarked a Unicode codepoint

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8379765

by qzc4 • 12 years ago

1 5 12 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

https://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual-property/guidelinesfor3rdparties.html

Use of the “keyboard”; Apple Logo (Option-Shift-K) for commercial purposes without the prior written consent of Apple may constitute trademark infringement and unfair competition in violation of federal and state laws. Use of Apple trademarks may be prohibited, unless expressly authorized.

Codhisattva• 12 years ago

®

dalke3• 12 years ago

According to http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~fine/OSX/unicode_apple_logo.html it's in a private use area.

This is probably fine for Mac-only applications. But it is NOT appropriate, and even WRONG, and it will NOT work properly as a general web page character. The problem is that the unicode value used is one of several that is set aside for private use. That means that each operating system, or application, or implementation is free to use those unicode characters for anything they want. It just so happens that Apple has chosen to use unicode character U+F8FF (decimal value 63743, or on the web as either  or ) as the Apple Logo.

The definition seems to be from http://www.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/VENDORS/APPLE/CORPCHA...

    # The following (1) is for the Mac OS Roman encoding
    # (also used in Symbol & Croatian).
    # NOTE: The graphic image associated with the Apple logo 
    character is
    # not authorized for use without permission of Apple, and unauthorized
    # use might constitute trademark infringement.
    0xF8FF	# Apple logo # Roman-0xF0, Symbol-0xF0, Croatian-0xD8

and quoting from http://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/Archives-Old/UML... :

In the very early days of Unicode development, the Apple logo was used as an example of a character from an existing (i.e., Macintosh) character set that would have to be mapped to a private-use value.
Apple Computer has published its recommendation. The issue is closed unless Apple Computer (owner of the trademark) chooses to bring it up.

qzc4• 12 years ago

Yes, I remember reading that at some point, but what I found interesting is that they seem to be trademarking not the glyph, but the codepoint, so these fonts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Use_Areas#U.2BF8FF_usag... are breaking the law. Or rather, anything with the character in it, like Codhisattva's comment.

dalke3• 12 years ago

How are they breaking the law? That would require use in an infringing way, and the law has some well defined requirements for what that means.

First, Why do you think that Apple claims a trademark on the codepoint? It's not something Apple mentioned in the quote I did earlier:

The graphic image associated with the Apple logo character is not authorized for use without permission of Apple, and unauthorized use might constitute trademark infringement.

I also did a USPTO trademark search for 'F8FF' and found nothing, so it doesn't look like the codepoint is trademarked.

Second, even if there were some sort of trademark on F8FF, inclusion of a symbol in a font isn't in and of itself trademark infringement. The use must cause a likelihood of customer confusion, otherwise no infringement is possible.

Take a look at http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/icons/#brand or http://www.brandsoftheworld.com/search/logo?search_api_views... and tell me if you think they had to permission from the trademark holders.

Use of a trademark doesn't mean trademark infringement. Codhisattva's comment is not trademark infringement. There's no misrepresentation or market confusion. I can say things like "compatible with Micosoft Windows" even though I don't control that trademark or have permission from Microsoft.

Not only that, but in the US Codhisattva's comment is covered by free speech. I can sell a button that says "No !" as a form of protest or political commentary even if selling a T-shirt which says "I♥!" is likely infringement (doubly so if it infringes on NYC's INY style).

Apple has trademarked a Unicode codepoint

Related Stories