Effects of an unified system of Industrial Designs

While patent authorities the last decades have strived to harmonize IP legislation, little empirical evidence exists on the impacts of harmonization of IP law on innovation. This paper is first to put forward evidence from the harmonization of industrial designs (ID). From 1st of April 2003 it was possible for applicants that desired to apply for IDs to apply for all European countries in one application instead of national ID applications. Our findings evidence a sharp increase in number of IDs acquired after 2003 as firms apply for three times as many IDs after the harmonization. However, the findings also reveals that it was not, as expected, SMEs benefitting from the harmonization, but larger firms, firms with prior experience in applying for IP and firms with legal capabilities. We also present findings on the effect of the harmonization of the IP system on other economic outcomes than acquisition of IDs. We investigate whether we empirically can observe an impact from the unified IP system on firms’ creative outcomes. We identify a weak effect four years after the harmonization, however, the change occurs for all firms not only the firms investing in the IDs. Why we cannot conclude that the harmonization had significant positive effects on creative outcome. These results highlight the complexity of harmonizing IP legislation and point to policy makers to be cautious.