Designs: do economists neglect them?

Apologies if you know about this already, but the first of Dr Nicola Searle's new series of posts on economics for the intellectual property community has just been posted on the IPKat as "Katonomics 14: largely neglected -- design rights". You can read it in full here.

Nicola has expressed her surprise both at how little economics research has been directed to designs law and at how much of does exist seems to have emanated from the UK's Intellectual Property Office.  If you know of any useful research that she has missed, please post a reference to it in the Comments section below.