On Mon, Jul 27, 2015 at 1:10 PM, Doug Ewell <[email protected]> wrote: > Garth Wallace <gwalla at gmail dot com> wrote: > >> I read this proposal [L2/15-196R] and was a little confused. Why >> aren't they proposing the actual sports pictograms that are in use for >> international events like the Olympics? Those are generally stylized >> human figures shown engaging in sports, but the suggested symbols in >> this proposal seem to mostly be pictures of sports equipment. It seems >> like reinventing the wheel. Are the Olympic-style pictograms not felt >> to be sufficiently emoji-like? > > The official Summer Olympics pictograms change each time the Games are > held: > > http://www.olympic.org/Assets/OSC%20Section/pdf/QR_sports_pictograms_of_the_olympic_summer_games_1964_2016.pdf > > Although the symbols introduced for the 1972 Munich Games were > particularly influential and are often thought to be canonical, these > symbols have been styled quite differently since 1992. > > Additionally, the images are copyrighted, for the most part by the > International Olympic Committee (see page 2 of the PDF document).
The style of them changes with each Games, but the identities do not. To my mind, this is equivalent to the glyph/character distinction. The individual Olympiad-specific images are copyrighted but not even the IOC can copyright the idea of "stick figure playing hockey, used to symbolize the sport of ice hockey". The UCS even includes a few of them already: U+26F7 SKIER is the symbol for Alpine skiing.
