> Pretty much every company uses some combination of characters as a key marketing strategy (the company or product name). Do they need to create their own font to be able to display their name?
No, but they do have to use a font with a license that permits you to do so. You can't just type your company name in Helvetica and go with it, Linotype will want to have a fee. (often a one-time non-recurring payment)
I don't need to have a license to display my company's name in a system font on the user's OS. The user needs to have a license to the font to be able to have it installed in their OS.
If I was shipping the font with my app, then I would need a license to the font.
I was talking about logos, sorry for the confusion. Of course you do not need a license to use the system font on a particular system.
But I think that arguing that now we can't use San Francisco font on iOS for anything is a good example of a slippery slope fallacy. I think Apple's move on the emoji usage is a mistake and I suppose they will backpedal on this. However I do think that it is not comparable.
