They’re actually incredibly labor-intensive to create!

How so? And people have been creating fonts for 500 years. What's the need to create more? It's just a font.

> How so?

You need to draw every letter in uppercase and lowercase, and every number and symbol. You need to make sure each character is visually consistent with and works well alongside every other character.

Then you need to repeat the above for every weight your font supports. (Bold, semibold, light, heavy, etc.)

Then you need to repeat all of the above for italics.

Then you need to kern the font. This means determining how much space to leave between every possible combination of two characters in your font.

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> And people have been creating fonts for 500 years. What's the need to create more?

That's a bit like saying "People have been writing books for 500 years. What's the need to create more?"

We've only been displaying fonts on LCD screens for ~30 years, and fonts that were designed for print don't look as good on screen (and vise versa). Even fonts that were designed for low-res LCD screens often don't look as good on newer high-resolution ones.

Branding. When a company puts their name on an advertisement/product/building they want it to be instantly recognizable and they want to convey a specific image that's more than just the written word.

That's a trademark, not a font or a copyright. Trademark IP law is distinct.