According to The Washington Post, later that year, members of the Unicode Consortium agreed to include five different skin tones as emoji standards, thanks to Parrot’s push. reportBut a few weeks later, Apple refused to work with Parrott on the variety of emojis, saying the company would design its own emojis based on the Unicode standard and incorporate them directly into iPhone keyboards. With this move, iDiversicons are no longer needed.
“I thought I was doing everything right,” Parrott said. “It was very disappointing.”
Parrott then spent more than five years trying to patent her work, but the USPTO continued to reject her application and subsequent appeals. In 2020, she filed a lawsuit against Apple for copyright infringement.Apple lawyer reportedly “Copyright does not protect the idea of applying five different skin tones to the emoji because the idea is not copyrightable,” argued a U.S. district judge last year. Threw away her suit, declare Her idea of diverse emoji was “unprotectable.”
“Before we shared anything, the judges seemed already made up,” Parrott said.
In the United States, a disproportionate number of new patents are being handed out to wealthy corporations, especially over small independent business owners run by women and people of color.according to one studymore than 50% of new U.S. patents went to the top 1% richest patent holders in 2020. another survey, from 2010, found that from 1970 to 2006, black inventors in America had only six patents per million people. 2016 research was also found Black Americans applied for patents at almost half the rate of whites.
In 2019, the USPTO will report Called SUCCESS (Study of Underrepresented Classes Chasing Engineering and Science Success) new law The report identified publicly available data on the number of patents successfully filed each year by women, people of color, and veterans. The report concluded that such data are “limited”. Only 12% of U.S. patented inventors in 2016 were women, and there was virtually no data for other groups.
“We encourage the patent office and administration to clarify what actions the USPTO has taken to improve the collection of demographic data from patent applicants,” Lee said. said in an interview with BuzzFeed News. Or big business. From its historic beginnings, the Patent Office’s goal has been to advance the innovation and talent of individual Americans. ”
A USPTO spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that the agency has taken initiatives to “attract more aspiring inventors and entrepreneurs, including underrepresented communities involved in the innovation ecosystem.” Inclusive Innovation Council, women entrepreneur initiativeand pro bono program and free service Help resource-hungry inventors.
Jessica Morel, chief marketing officer at LexisNexis Intellectual Property Solutions, described the patent landscape as “David vs Goliath.” she said: Track record of successful patent applications. ”
Still, other experts argued that Parrott’s original ideas for various emojis could not have been patented in the first place.
