My Word! Design Patents On A Typeface

Utility patents are for functional inventions. Design patents protect the look of something functional, regardless of whether the functional aspects are new. Because of this, a popular use of design patents is to protect the outside of common consumer products. What's more common than the written word?

Increasingly, companies are investing in designing unique and aesthetically pleasing typefaces. A typeface is sometimes referred to as a "font," although these two concepts are slightly different (technically, a font is a typeface having a specific size). A basic typeface is a set of characters and numerals, e.g., each of the 26 letters and the numerals 1 through 10. A company can use a unique typeface to convey pretty much anything on any of its products, its advertising, its website, and any other place a company would publicly use the written word. Why would a company want to design a unique typeface? Perhaps they view the publicly available typefaces as boring. Or