Typeface designers and font creators who wish to protect their work from plagiarism will find that the intellectual property laws for typographic design differ slightly from laws geared toward writers. Copyrights, patents, and trademarks are some of the ways in which type designers protect their work from plagiarism.
Bringhurst
About That Typeface: Three Books on Good (and Bad) Design
By Pam Wells @wellsworld
It was the ’80s, and desktop publishing was just starting to take off. Bringhurst felt the sudden availability of digital fonts would overwhelm any inclination toward rational design and cause typographical chaos. He did what any perfectionist would do: write a book.