For several years, Apple, like other platforms, has allowed us to express ourselves with emoticons with different skin tones, an idea that was not hers but that of Katrina Parrot, who has just sued Apple for the use of these emoticons on iOS, emoticons that she created via the iDiversicons application.
Katrina sued Apple for copyright infringement. As we can read in the Washington Post, this developer was invited to Apple’s offices in 2013 to present their idea, but in the end, they did not reach a mutually beneficial agreement.
It was in 2013, emoticons represented people with only one skin tone. Parrott, who is black, said her eldest daughter came home from college one day and lamented that she couldn’t express herself through emoji with skin tones that matched hers.
With this idea in mind, launched the iDiversicons app on the App Store 6 months later, an app that allowed users to copy and paste emojis with five different skin tones into messaging apps.
However, Apple and other companies have added the emojis with different skin tones on their operating systems, so the app quickly ceased to make any sense.
Apple defends itself against this accusation by stating that:
Copyright does not protect the idea of applying five different skin tones to emojis because the ideas are not copyrighted.
In addition, he claims to have developed the cultural diversity of emoticons himself, without copying Katrina’s work. A lawyer consulted by The Washington Post says the deal will be hard to win because the emojis aren’t completely identical and that “just because she had the idea first is not enough.”
