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 products, including 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 outbound open source licenses 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 subject to the Unicode Terms of Use. The Unicode® Standard Core Specification, Unicode Technical Reports, Unicode Code Charts, and many other materials are generally made freely available for personal and internal business use while being subject to certain restrictions on modification and public distribution, as set forth in further detail in the Unicode Terms of Use and the legal notices carried by these publications.

The Consortium’s software and data files are generally licensed under the OSI-approved Unicode License v3, a free, 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.

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 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

Participants in our Technical Committees and Working Groups and all contributors to our standards, specifications, data, and software projects are generally required to contribute under our standard Unicode Contributor License Agreement (CLA). (Contributions of emoji and fonts are governed by different agreements as set forth below.)

The standard Unicode CLA is a license agreement that ensures that Unicode participants and contributors retain ownership of any intellectual property rights in their contributions while granting the Unicode Consortium the necessary legal rights to use and redistribute those contributions in the various Consortium products.

The latest and current standard Unicode CLA is based on the Apache Software Foundation's CLA, which is well-known in the industry and widely adopted by many respected open source projects. The Unicode CLA closely tracks the terms of the Apache CLA with the primary difference being that the Unicode CLA explicitly covers contributions of standards, specifications, and data as well as software.

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 determine whether or not their contribution is owned or claimed 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 publications of the Unicode Consortium do so under the Unicode Font Submission Policy and pursuant to the Unicode Font License or an acceptable public 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 any one or more of the Unicode Consortium’s standards, specifications data, and software projects and/or wish to participate in any Unicode Technical Committees or Working Groups, you will need to sign a Unicode CLA.

Which CLA - Individual or Corporate?

Your first step is to determine which version of the Unicode CLA you will be contributing under. There are two versions of the standard 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, you as the individual who is making the contribution or your employer. It is your responsibility to determine whether or not your contributions are owned or claimed by your employer.

• The Unicode Corporate CLA should be signed by your employer if you are not self-employed but rather are employed by a company that has (or claims) rights in the work you contribute. In many jurisdictions/situations, employers retain intellectual property rights for works produced by their employees. Thus, it is important that your employer sign the Corporate CLA to ensure that Unicode has the appropriate permissions to use your contribution. To check if your employer has already signed the Unicode Corporate CLA, please refer to this list of corporate signatories. If your employer is not on the list of corporate signatories, you will need to work with your employer to get a Corporate CLA in place. Please contact member-services@unicode.org to get this process started.
• You should sign the Unicode Individual CLA if you (i) are an individual who is unemployed or self-employed, e.g., a sole proprietor or you have your own business, or (ii) if you are employed, but you have determined that you are the sole owner of your contributions because your employer does not have or claim any intellectual property rights in your contributions.

If you are unsure which CLA to sign, please first discuss this question with your employer to determine whether your employer has or claims 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.

How Do I Sign?

If you are either (i) signing an Individual CLA, or (ii) are covered by your employer’s existing Corporate CLA (please check this list of corporate signatories), you should sign the CLA 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 need to sign an Individual CLA but do not wish to do so in GitHub, you may download the PDF version of Unicode Individual CLA, complete all fields, sign and date it, and return a scanned copy to member-services@unicode.org. Please be sure to complete all fields and sign and date it, or we will have to return it to you to be fully completed.

If your employer is not on this list of corporate signatories, then a new Corporate CLA will be needed, and you cannot sign the CLA in GitHub. You will need to arrange for your employer to sign a PDF version of 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.

A New CLA is Required when Employment Status Changes

If you have been participating or contributing under a Corporate CLA but then change your employment status, you will need to stop participating in and contributing to Unicode until a new CLA is signed covering your contributions under your new employment status.

If this describes your situation, you should first notify Unicode immediately with the date your employment will end (or has ended) so you can be deleted from your prior Corporate CLA. If you wish to continue participating/contributing you will need to do so under a new Individual or Corporate CLA as outlined above, or under an existing Corporate CLA if your new employer has already signed a Unicode CLA. 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.