The point of intellectual copyright is to make it worthwhile for people to design things, especially in a corporate context.
When you create/design anything, you automatically get the rights to it (at least, in the UK, Italy and Switzerland - some parts of the world have somewhat different rules on this, and a few still have none at all). This means that nobody can, say, steal your design and make money from it without your permission.
Employment contracts with companies typically make it so that you automatically transfer rights to work-relevant designs to the company. That is where the problem starts. In the three countries I've specified, the company is basically deemed a separate legal entity, so anyone can then use the designs with their permission - and nobody can without. The definition of a specific intellectual property is rather specific and vague, making it difficult to comply with the law... ...and due to the FIA's requirements that all F1 cars have distinct intellectual properties, failing this test can have serious in-sport implications.
Outside the FIA, judges have tended not to look upon intellectual property theft of F1 teams seriously, as Force India getting rights to large parts of their then-current 2009 car stolen by Caterham during wind tunnel work and getting the princely sum of £50,000 for it (the judge stated they would have fined only £25,000 but for the "serious disinclination to provide the property involved") would confirm. Toyota got no fine at all when they stole from Ferrari, probably because two cited culprits got short jail terms instead.
Claiming something that is not really designed, but rather assembled (such as DNA) is the silly one to me, though it seems some people think that's a type of design too...