question: Are unicode keyboard symbols copyrighted, if so why?
comment: The underlying codes and their descriptions are an ISO standard that anyone can use. The implementations are copyrighted by the person who made them, just like any other font character. So “smiley face shaded yellow” is a standard, but the way Apple displays this is copyrighted by Apple, and the way Google displays it is copyrighted Google.
passages: The "name" of a typeface can separately be registered as a trademark () for a fee, which like a digital font also holds much higher copyright protection status than an analogue typeface itself. If a typeface's name is trademarked, no other typeface may bear the same name, not even digital clones of the analogue typeface.
  
  Section::::Copyright.:Ireland.
  
  Irish copyright law covers typefaces. Like the United Kingdom law (see below), it allows for using the typeface in the ordinary course of printing. The term of protection is 15 years from first publication.
  
  Section::::Copyright.:Japan.
   The basic standard for copyrighted digital font use is that a license is required for each individual font used on a computer, or in the case of businesses, one per entity. Under the license fonts are typically licensed only for use on one computer. These End User License Agreements (EULAs) generally state that fonts may only be used on machines that have a valid license. These fonts cannot be shared by multiple computers or given to others. These licenses can be obtained in three ways: directly from the font authors (e.g., Adobe), as part of a larger software package (e.g., Microsoft Office), or through purchasing or downloading the font from an authorized outlet.
   BULLET::::- The Institute of the Estonian Language uses the PUA to encode Latin and Cyrillic precomposed characters that have no Unicode encoding.
  
  BULLET::::- The Free Tengwar Font Project uses a different mapping from the ConScript Unicode Registry that largely follows Michael Everson’s 2001-03-07 Tengwar discussion paper, but diverges in some details.
  
  BULLET::::- The MARC 21 standard uses the PUA to encode East Asian characters present in MARC-8 that have no Unicode encoding.
  
  BULLET::::- The SIL Corporate PUA uses the PUA to encode characters used in minority languages that have not yet been accepted into Unicode.
   BULLET::::- On the Fira Sans typeface used in Firefox OS, codice_15 is displayed as the Mozilla logo (the dinosaur head).
  
  BULLET::::- Lotus Multi-Byte Character Set (LMBCS), the encoding and character set internally used by Lotus/IBM Lotus 1-2-3, Symphony, SmartSuite, Notes, Domino as well as a number of third-party products such as Microsoft Works, uses some characters (codice_16-codice_17 and codice_18-codice_19) in the Private Use Area for symbols not defined in Unicode. Of these, codice_18 is known to be reserved for a crown currency symbol ("Kr"), and codice_21 and codice_22 were later mapped to codice_23 (ﬂ) and codice_24 (ﬁ) respectively.
   BULLET::::- "User editable dictionary support for phonetic typing: " There is a Bengali dictionary in Avro keyboard for automatic correction. The editions of two auto correct dictionaries of different computers can be merged.
  
  BULLET::::- "Keyboard macro support: " Multiple key can be combined to write custom word or sentence as a command.
  
  BULLET::::- "Unicode to Bijoy converter: " There is a program called Unicode to Bijoy converter to convert Unicode Bengali text to ASCII (or Bijoy) standard.
   Some modern invented scripts which have not yet been included in Unicode (e.g., Tengwar) or which do not qualify for inclusion in Unicode due to lack of real-world use (e.g., Klingon) are listed in the ConScript Unicode Registry, along with unofficial but widely used Private Use Area code assignments.
  
  There is also a Medieval Unicode Font Initiative focused on special Latin medieval characters. Part of these proposals have been already included into Unicode.
   It's not clear at first from Typeeto's web pages that it 100% compatible with only English language, international usage will result in some issues. They mention iOS layout switch combination and suggest installation of specific android keyboard so layout switch will work but keyboard they recommend is no longer on Play Store. Not every 'hardware keyboard' app will work. Copy-paste only works for languages they directly support.
   Such licenses typically only apply to the font file itself (which is a computer program), and not to the shape of the typeface, which may be subject to a design patent.
  
  Open-source font licenses include the General Public License with the Font Exception, the SIL Open Font License, and the Ubuntu Font License.
  
  Section::::Lawsuits.
   Under the Unicode definition, code points in the Private Use Areas are assigned characters—they are not noncharacters, reserved, or unassigned. Their category is "codice_7", and no character names are specified. No representative glyphs are provided, and character semantics are left to private agreement. Private-use characters are assigned Unicode code points whose interpretation is not specified by this standard and whose use may be determined by private agreement among cooperating users. These characters are designated for private use and do not have defined, interpretable semantics except by private agreement.
   Section::::Copyright.
  
  Section::::Copyright.:Germany.
   Under United States copyright law, the abstract letter shapes of functional text fonts cannot be copyrighted; only the computer programming code in a font is given copyright protection. This makes the production and distribution of clone fonts possible.
  
  An early version of Segoe, possibly an evaluation version, was included with certain versions of SuSE Linux, but no longer ships as part of that operating system.
  
  Section::::Segoe UI.
   According to section 906.4 of the "Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices", typography and calligraphy are also not copyrightable in themselves.
  
  Section::::Design patents.
   Typefaces cannot be protected by copyright in the United States (Code of Federal Regulations, Ch 37, Sec. 202.1(e); "Eltra Corp. vs. Ringer"). The idea that typefaces (rather than fonts, which are computer software) cannot be copyrighted in the United States is black letter law. 37 C.F.R. § 202.1(e). Under U.S. law, typefaces and their letter forms or glyphs are considered utilitarian objects whose public utility outweighs any private interest in protecting their creative elements. However, there is a distinction between a font and a typeface. The machine code used to display a stylized typeface (called a font) is protectable as copyright. In 1992, the US Copyright Office determined that digital outline fonts had elements that could be protected as software. Since that time, the Office has accepted registration of copyright for digital vector fonts, such as PostScript Type 1, TrueType, and OpenType format files.
   Some elements of the software engines used to display fonts on computers have or had software patents associated with them. In particular, Apple Inc. patented some of the hinting algorithms for TrueType, requiring open source alternatives such as FreeType to use different algorithms until Apple's TrueType hinting patents expired in May 2010.
   (3) YES BUT NOT ALL - Only an artistic work can rise to the level of copyright protection.
  
  In the present case, the VT100 screen displays did not rise to this level. They were considered to be tables and found to be literary in character. Based on Article 1(2) of the Directive, these were simply ideas underlying the computer program's interfaces, providing merely "the static framework for the display of the dynamic data which it is the task of the software to produce."
   Similar initiatives have been founded for Early Cyrillic Symbols ("Cyrillic Font Initiative", CYFI) and others. They are coordinated in the Linguistic Corporate Use Area (LINCUA). UNZ is a set compatible with MUFI, but it is not a true subset since it contains PUA additions of its own. It is intended for blackletter fonts, their typographic ligatures in particular.
  
  Section::::See also.
  
  BULLET::::- ConScript Unicode Registry
  
  BULLET::::- Record type
  
  BULLET::::- Unicode fonts
  
  Section::::External links.
  
  BULLET::::- Medieval Unicode Font Initiative website
  
  BULLET::::- MUFI character database
  
  BULLET::::- Medieval Nordic Text Archive (extensive use of MUFI characters)
   BULLET::::- "Customizing Keyboard layout: " New Keyboard layout can be created or the character settlement of existing keyboard keys can be rearranged by using the Avro keyboard layout changer which can be distributed and adopted like plugins.
  
  BULLET::::- "Unicode and ANSI based fonts availability: " Avro supports and provides Bengali Unicode and ANSI standard fonts. Any Unicode based Bengali font can be used with Avro besides ANSI fonts.
   Another common PUA agreement is maintained by the Medieval Unicode Font Initiative (MUFI). This project is attempting to support all of the scribal abbreviations, ligatures, precomposed characters, symbols, and alternate letterforms found in medieval texts written in the Latin alphabet. The express purpose of MUFI is to experimentally determine which characters are necessary to represent these texts, and to have those characters officially encoded in Unicode. As of Unicode version 5.1, 152 MUFI characters have been incorporated into the official Unicode encoding.
   The "Swedish with Sámi" keyboard allows typing not only Ø/ø and Æ/æ, but even the letters required to write various Sámi (also known as Lapp) languages. This keyboard has the same function for all the keys engraved on the regular Swedish keyboard, and the additional letters are available through the key.
  
  On Macintosh computers, the "Swedish" and "Swedish Pro" keyboards differ somewhat from the image shown above, especially as regards the characters available using the or keys. (on the upper row) produces the "°" sign, and produces the "€" sign. The digit keys produce "©@£$∞§|[]≈" with and "¡"¥¢‰¶\{}≠" with .
   One of the more well-known and broadly implemented PUA agreements is maintained by the ConScript Unicode Registry (CSUR). The CSUR, which is not officially endorsed or associated with the Unicode Consortium, provides a mapping for constructed scripts, such as Klingon pIqaD and Ferengi script (Star Trek), Tengwar and Cirth (J.R.R. Tolkien's cursive and runic scripts), Alexander Melville Bell's Visible Speech, and Dr. Seuss' alphabet from "On Beyond Zebra". The CSUR previously encoded the undeciphered Phaistos characters, as well as the Shavian and Deseret alphabets, which have all been accepted for official encoding in Unicode.
   Typefaces may be protected by a design patent in many countries (either automatically, by registration, or by some combination thereof). A design patent is the strongest system of protection, but the most uncommon. It is the only US legal precedent that protects the actual design (the design of the individual shapes of the letters) of the font. A prominent example is the European Union, where the automatic protection (without registration) expires after three years and can be extended (by registration) up to 25 years.
   Although typeface design is not subject to copyright in the United States under the 1976 Copyright Act, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in "Adobe Systems, Inc. v. Southern Software, Inc." (No. C95-20710 RMW, N.D. Cal. January 30, 1998) found that there was original authorship in the placement of points on a computer font's outline; i.e., because a given outline can be expressed in myriad ways, a particular selection and placement of points has sufficient originality to qualify for copyright.
   There is also support for common mathematical and currency symbols (including Bitcoin (₿) codice_5 which was ratified into Unicode in 2017) as well as ligatures such as fi and fl, along with stylistic alternates for a, g and 0.
  
  There are a few unreleased symbols for IBM Plex Sans Condensed, IBM Plex Mono and IBM Plex Serif such as the generic currency sign (¤), prime symbol (′) and double prime symbol (″). In addition Mike Abbink has confirmed support for the Mathematical Operators block and support for the symbols used in the APL programming language in 2019.
   Typefaces, fonts, and their glyphs raise intellectual property considerations in copyright, trademark, design patent, and related laws. The copyright status of a typeface—and any font file that describes it digitally—varies between jurisdictions. In the United States, the shapes of typefaces are not eligible for copyright, though the shapes may be protected by design patent (although these are rarely applied for, the first US design patent ever awarded was for a typeface). Typefaces can be protected in other countries, including the UK, Germany, and France, by industrial design protections that are similar to copyright or design patent in that they protect the abstract shapes. Additionally, in the US and in some other countries, computer "fonts"—the "digital instantiation" of the shapes as vector outlines—may be protected by copyright on the computer code that produces them. The name of a typeface may also be protected as a trademark.
   Section::::Licensing.
  