https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/3ro8hz/are_emojis_protected_by_copyrights/ Emoji are Unicode characters that anyone can use. However, specific implementations of emoji can be proprietary and therefore can't be used. Think of them as fonts. You can copyright a typeface, but you can't copyright the letters and numbers themselves. You wouldn't be able to use Apple's emoji set but you most definitely can use emoji. You could get your own set designed or use an open source set like http://emojione.com