Protecting aesthetic innovations? An exploration of the use of registered community designs

Rainer Filitz, Joachim Henkel () and Bruce S. Tether

Research Policy, 2015, vol. 44, issue 6, 1192-1206

Abstract: A decade after their introduction, approximately three-quarters of a million European registered community designs (RCDs) have been filed, and recent court cases suggest firms regard them as important for competition. This paper reviews design protection in the European Union, discusses this legal instrument to protect designs and design innovations, and provides an overview of how RCDs are used by firms from different countries and industries. To develop a more detailed understanding of their usage, we also report an exploratory qualitative study on the use of RCDs by German firms in three industries: footwear, car manufacturing and tool-making. This revealed some important differences, notably between judicious filing and “all-you-can-file” strategies, which implies that future research using this instrument requires attention be paid to firm and industry level behaviors. We develop a set of propositions, and set out a research agenda.

Keywords: Design rights; Product design; Innovation; Research agenda (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733315000323
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:respol:v:44:y:2015:i:6:p:1192-1206

DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2015.02.004

Access Statistics for this article

Research Policy is currently edited by M. Bell, B. Martin, W.E. Steinmueller, A. Arora, M. Callon, M. Kenney, S. Kuhlmann, Keun Lee and F. Murray

More articles in Research Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().