A Houston area woman who says she created diverse emoji is suing Apple for copyright infringement.
Katrina Parrott is a former aerospace procurement contractor and creator of iDiverseicons.
Her app, which launched in the Apple app store in October 2013, features emoji with five skin tones.
“All of the emojis at the time were Caucasian. I just felt as if everybody should be represented, which is why we came up with the five-skin tone emojis that represent inclusion,” Parrott said.
The idea came from her daughter, who was a college student at the time.
“She came home one weekend and said, ‘It sure would be nice to be able to send an emoji to my friends that looked like me.’ And my first question was ‘What’s an emoji?’”, Parrott recalled.
Parrott took her idea to Silicon Valley, and in 2014 met with Apple software development executives.
“I wanted to team up with Apple because I got my start in their store and I was like ‘Ok, I’m a part of your family, let’s do this together’. I shared a thumb drive with my emojis on it,” she said.
In 2015, Apple launched their own set of diverse emojis with five skin tones.
“It took them five months after taking advantage of everything that I had to offer to tell me that they wanted to do it themselves. I was really disappointed and destroyed. They took my idea and I got nothing for it in return,” she said.
Her lawsuit does not specify the dollar amount of damages she is seeking.
“We’re looking for them to do the right thing and make her whole for that which they’ve taken from her,” said Parrott’s attorney, Craig Ribbeck
Apple has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
In court filings, the company said it developed diverse skin tone emoji on its own and did not copy her work.
Apple argues that Parrott does not have claim to the copyright of skin tone emoji and that “copyright does not protect the idea of applying five different skin tones to emoji because ideas are not copyrightable.”