Firms’ intellectual property protection with national versus European design rights: a count model

Abstract Design rights as an intellectual property are used by firms to exclude others from benefitting from design features of a protected product and can be registered via different institutional settings. This paper employs a unique data set on design rights in Austria over a ten-year period, integrating national and EU-level data into a single database. The overall goal is to increase our understanding of registering industrial designs as a means of appropriability and to contribute to our understanding of the co-evolution of national and EU-wide intellectual property rights institutions. A multivariate analysis of the structural characteristics of firms choosing industrial designs yields new insights into which firms protect creativity and innovation with design rights of differing geographical coverage. The results of this paper show that design rights are an intellectual property that has increased in use over the time period but is still not yet widely used. National industrial design registration and EU industrial design registration as two distinct types of intellectual property are used by different types of firms, with little overlap of firms using both. National design registrations are used by firms with domestic markets in decorative and creative sectors like wood or advertising, and in the car and motor industry. Firms that choose EU-wide protection are mostly large firms with high export ratios that use IP strategically in applying bundles of IP including patents and trademarks, or firms in sectors with high aesthetic standards like fashion, leather, or wood.