Utility Models in the Italian Patent System

Abstract

Utility models are useful and alternative tools to protect some technical innovations: methods, processes and compositions are excluded. It’s cheap and easy to get a grant of a utility model in Italy: no substantive examination and a lower standard of inventiveness are required. The inventive step refers to the capability of the three-dimensional form to confer an object or a device a specific efficacy or an ease of use. A utility model protection is attractive for small and medium-sized enterprises and universities as it costs around 40 percent of the cost of a patent for invention.