It's Just an & - But Who Owns It?

Simon Fodden at slaw ruminates on the ampersand:

The ampersand has going for it that it’s a place for the type designer to fool around and get fancy. We all have some Platonic notion of what a letter ‘a’ or ‘g’ should look like, for instance; but the ampersand is a one off, a sport among the pedigreed.

He provides some examples of the design varietals which various of his computer system's fonts provide for the & symbol.  Which got me to thinking - to what extent is there copyright in a font?

Turns out that is something of an issue among typeface designers.  The typeright organization, for example, advocates for the "legal protection [of fonts] as intellectual property", and offers a FAQ on the issues surrounding use of fonts and a set of arguments/counter-arguments on the issue of extending copyright protection to fonts.  Here's a somewhat old (1998) piece about copyright in fonts [.pdf] by Jonathan L. Mezrich - as well as some further information from the mid-90s, collecting various statements from the US Copyright Office.