Industrial design rights and the market value of firms

Abstract

This paper studies how investments in design affect the market value of firms, using European Registered Community Designs and national Swedish design rights data combined with R&D, patent and trademark data, for the period 2003–2013. This paper is the first large-scale quantitative study using industrial designs rights to measure design. Nonlinear least-squares regressions are used to investigate the association between these variables and the market value of Swedish firms. The results show that industrial designs rights have a positive and significant relationship to the market value of firms. It provides both new evidence on the effect of industrial design rights on the market value of firms and internationally comparable results for other intangible assets such as patents, trademarks and R&D. Theoretically, the paper contributes to the understanding of design knowledge and the valuation of design rights.