THE UNICODE CONSORTIUM

The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit corporation that develops, maintains, and promotes software internationalization standards and data, particularly the Unicode Standard, which specifies the representation of text in all modern software products and standards. The Unicode Consortium actively develops standards in the area of internationalization including defining the behavior and relationships between Unicode characters. The Consortium works closely with W3C and ISO which is responsible ... for maintaining ISO/IEC 10646, the International Standard synchronized with the Unicode Standard. The publications of the Unicode Consortium include The Unicode Standard, with its annexes and character database, Unicode technical standards and reports, Unicode technical notes, and the Unicode locales project, the Common Locale Data Repository. Members of the Consortium include major computer corporations, software producers, database vendors, government ministries, research institutions, international agencies, various user groups, and interested individuals. The Consortium's Directors and Officers come from a variety of organizations, representing a wide spectrum of text-encoding and computing applications. The Consortium has the status of a 501(c)(3) charitable organization. Donations to the Consortium are tax-deductible to the extent allowed for by law. The Consortium bylaws are publicly available. The Consortium maintains a set of official policies with regards to patents, the stability of the standard, and Unicode's trademarks, logo, and copyright material. The Unicode Consortium was incorporated in January 1991 in the state of California under the discussions of engineers from [Xerox](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/xerox) (Joe Becker) and [Apple](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/apple) ([Lee Collins](http://www.crunchbase.com/person/leo-collins) and Mark Davis).More