The Unicode® Consortium
Intellectual Property, Licensing & Technical Contribution Policies

The Unicode Consortium Mission

The Unicode Consortium’s mission is to enable people around the world to use computers in any language. Our freely available standards, specifications, software, and data form the foundation for software internationalization in all major operating systems, browsers, search engines, applications, and the World Wide Web.

The Unicode Terms of Use & The Unicode License

In support of this mission, the Consortium has adopted terms of use and a primary outbound license that are intended to make the Consortium’s standards, specifications, documentation, data, and software as widely and freely available as reasonably possible while protecting the integrity of these products. All Consortium standards, specifications, documentation, data, and software are generally covered by the Unicode Copyright & Terms of Use and are globally and freely licensed under the OSI-approved Unicode License v3. These two documents should be read together to ensure an understanding of how the Consortium makes its various products available for use.

The Unicode License v3 is a free and open source highly permissive license based on the MIT License. The primary difference between the MIT License and the Unicode License is that the Unicode License expressly covers data and data files. The Unicode License v3 and its predecessors have been approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) since 2015.

While the Unicode® Standard is generally made available for use under the Unicode Copyright & Terms of Use and the Unicode License, each version of the Standard may have further specifications of rights and restrictions on use noted in the front matter for a particular version, and these further specifications and restrictions should be consulted for each specific version of the Standard. For further information regarding the Standard and its versions, please refer to About the Unicode Standard.

In addition, the Unicode Code Charts are made available under their own specific and narrow terms and conditions, which may be found on each individual code chart. As a general rule, code charts may be freely used only for personal or internal business uses and may not be incorporated either wholly or in part into any product or publication, or otherwise be distributed without express written permission from the Unicode Consortium. (Linking to code charts is generally permitted.) Moreover, the fonts and font data used in production of code charts are, in general, used by the Consortium under narrow license from the font owner(s) and accordingly may not be extracted, or used in any other way by others in any product or publication, without permission or license granted by the font owner(s). Please consult the specific terms and conditions on each code chart for the specific restrictions and permitted uses for that code chart.

Intellectual Property & Technical Contributions

The Unicode Consortium’s intellectual property and technical contribution policies are informed by the Consortium’s mission and its commitment to making the Consortium’s standards, specifications, data, and software as widely and freely available as reasonably possible.

Accordingly, the Consortium requires contributors to its standards, specifications, data, and software to license (or in some cases assign) to the Consortium any intellectual property rights they may have in their contributions, so as to allow the Consortium to make those contributions freely available under the Unicode Terms of Use and/or the Unicode License, as appropriate. The Consortium has several different policies and standard agreements under which contributions and submissions are made, as set forth in further detail below. In addition to our standard contribution and submission agreements, certain contributions may be made under other custom agreements, depending on the nature of the contribution and other circumstances.

The Unicode CLA for Specifications, Software, and Data Contributions

Contributors to our large data and software projects, e.g., CLDR, ICU, ICU4X, and associated sub-projects, are generally required to contribute under a contributor license agreement (CLA). We also require a CLA for contributions and submissions to the Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) of specifications, algorithms, and documentation, and any changes or updates thereto.

The Unicode CLAs are license agreements that ensure that a contributor retains ownership of any intellectual property rights in their contribution while granting the Unicode Consortium the necessary legal rights to use and redistribute that contribution in the various Consortium products.

The latest and current Unicode CLAs are based on the Apache Software Foundation's CLAs, which are well-known in the industry and widely adopted by many respected open source projects. The primary difference between the Apache CLAs and the Unicode CLAs is that the Unicode CLAs explicitly cover contributions of standards, specifications, and data as well as software.

There are two versions of the CLA, the Unicode Corporate CLA and the Unicode Individual CLA. Which version needs to be signed depends on who owns the contribution being made: the individual making the contribution or the contributor’s employer. It is the contributor's responsibility to know (or determine) whether or not their contribution is or may be owned by their employer.

(For further guidance on how to sign a Unicode CLA, please refer to the section below regarding How to Sign a Unicode CLA.)

The Unicode Emoji Proposal Agreement & License for Emoji Contributions

Those who submit a proposal for a new emoji do so in accordance with the Guidelines for Submitting Emoji Proposals and pursuant to the Unicode Emoji Proposal Agreement & License, which grants to the Consortium a broad license to any intellectual property rights in the proposed emoji.

The Unicode Font Submission Policy for Font Contributions

Those who contribute a font for characters to be encoded or a font otherwise intended to be used in a publication of the Unicode Consortium do so under the Unicode Font Submission Policy and pursuant to a Grant of Font License.

Contributions Made in the Absence of a Contributor License Agreement

In the absence of a signed CLA or other agreement with the Consortium that expressly governs particular contributions or submissions, the act of making a contribution or submission of any kind to the Consortium by any communication channel constitutes a binding legal agreement by the contributor or submitter that they:

  1. represent and agree that the contributed matter is not proprietary or confidential to the contributor or any third party, and
  2. grant to the Consortium and to recipients of products distributed by the Consortium a perpetual, irrevocable, unrestricted, worldwide, nonexclusive, no-charge, royalty-free license, without obligation for accounting, to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, distribute, make, use, sell, offer to sell, or import that matter for any purpose, with the unrestricted right to sublicense those rights.

How to Sign a Unicode CLA

If you wish to contribute to one or more of the Unicode Consortium’s data and software projects managed in GitHub, CLDR, ICU, or ICU4X, you will need to sign a Unicode CLA. This can usually be done directly in the Unicode GitHub repositories following the instructions found there, namely by opening a Pull Request or going directly to the Unicode CLA Form in GitHub. If you wish to make submissions to the UTC of specifications, algorithms, and/or associated documentation, or any proposed modifications thereto, a CLA is required. To start this process, please email member-services@unicode.org.

There are two versions of the Unicode CLA, the Unicode Corporate CLA and the Unicode Individual CLA. Which version needs to be signed depends on who owns the contribution being made, the individual making the contribution or the contributor’s employer. It is the contributor's responsibility to know (or determine) whether or not their contribution is or may be owned by their employer.

If you are unsure which CLA to sign, please first discuss this question with your employer to determine whether your employer has rights in your contributions and consents to your making contributions to the Unicode Consortium. Your manager and/or your company’s open source compliance or legal department should be able to advise you as to the steps required by your company. This is your legal responsibility and it is important to protect you, your employer, and the Unicode Consortium. If you have further questions, please contact member-services@unicode.org.

If you are signing an Individual CLA or are covered by your employer’s Corporate CLA, you can use the Unicode CLA Form in GitHub to sign the CLA. If a Corporate CLA is needed and your employer is not on this list of corporate signatories, then you cannot sign the CLA in GitHub. You will need to arrange for your employer to sign the Corporate CLA by contacting member-services@unicode.org. The Corporate CLA must be signed by someone with signing authority for the corporation (typically a director, vice president, or higher), and must also be reviewed by the Unicode Consortium legal counsel. Therefore, corporate CLAs may take some time to process and you will have to wait until the Corporate CLA is signed before contributing.

Signing a New CLA When Employment Status Changes

If a contributor has been contributing under a Corporate CLA but then changes employment status, they will need to stop contributing until a new CLA is signed covering their contributions under the new employment status. If this describes your situation, you should first notify Unicode immediately with the date your employment ends so you can be deleted from your prior CLA. If you wish to continue contributing you will need to put a new CLA in place. If you have become unemployed or self-employed you should personally sign the Individual CLA. If you have a new employer, you will need to ensure that your new employer has signed the Corporate CLA and that you are covered by it. To start this process, email member-services@unicode.org.