A woman has decided to sue Apple. She’s the one who initially introduced the idea of skin tones Emoji for chats on mobile devices.
Katrina Parrott is the woman who was the first to pitch the idea of skin tones Emoji to Apple several years ago. And now she’s about to sue the company as she feels cheated.
The California tech giant is yet to give response over the row.
Skin tones Emoji and Apple: What’s the matter?
Emojis are very common and almost inevitable when it comes to chats and other stuff users do on their phones. However, a few years ago, there were several restrictions in their variety.
There was only one skin color available for the Emojis in the past. That time, a woman named Katrina Parrott came up with different skin tones for them.
For this purpose, she went to Apple and even pitched her thoughts to the company. According to her, she discussed many ways in which she could use skin tones emoji.
In six months, she even built an app called iDiversicons. It enabled the users to copy and paste emojis with five multiple colors. She further invested an amount of $200,000 in her app’s growth and promotion.
But after some time, she realized that Apple and other tech companies already took her idea. They incorporated her skin-tone emoji concept in their newer devices.
Parrott has now decided to sue the California tech giant for neglecting her. And also for using the concept without giving her any credit, reward, or any other thing.
The company is yet to give a reply on this matter. However, in its filing, it says, “copyright does not protect the idea of applying five different skin tones to emoji because ideas are not copyrightable.”
Growing instances of unwanted situations
It’s astonishing to witness such an unexpected scenario, especially when it comes to Apple. It always keeps working on its goal of recognizing new ideas and individuals to include more diversity.
It has shown a lot of participation and involvement for equality and other vital issues in the tech sector.
But there have been several previous instances in which Apple faced challenging situations. And they were all for mostly wrong and highly harmful reasons.
In 2019, it forced a group of developers to remove some features from their app. It was the period when it was about to introduce the Screen Time feature in iOS 13.
Lately, it has been going through multiple legal challenges. EU regulators are diving deeper into an investigation against the company over its App Store’s in-app payment system policies.
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