Italian Patent Law provides the possibility of
filing utility model applications. By this kind of protection, new
models conferring a particular efficiency and application convenience
to machines, or parts thereof, instruments, and other objects, such
as particular arrangements, dispositions, configuration and like,
can be protected.
Methods cannot be protected as Utility Models.
A Utility Model lasts 10 years and can be enforced against third
parties exactly in the same way of Patents for invention.
The same validity requisites (Novelty, Inventiveness, Industrial
Applicability) provided for Patents for Invention are valid also
for Utility Models. A different kind of evaluation is provided
only for the Inventiveness requirement.
Italian Patent Law also provides the possibility of transforming
a Patent for invention into a Utility Model, and viceversa, after
the filing of the application.
