Utility Model
The Utility Model domain tests the second-tier protection that RA 9150 introduced for small technical advances. The exam focuses on the lower threshold, the shorter term, examination practice, and how a utility model interacts with a pending patent application.
Threshold
The IP Code protects as a utility model any technical solution of a problem in any field of human activity that is new and industrially applicable. No inventive step is required. That single omission is the whole point of the system: a device a skilled person would reach by routine substitution can still be registered if it is new and useful.
Term and procedure
Registration lasts seven years from the filing date, with no renewal. Examination concentrates on formal compliance and on excluded subject matter rather than on inventive step, so a certificate issues faster and cheaper than a patent. An applicant may convert a pending patent application into a utility model application, or the reverse, keeping the original filing date; the conversion must happen before grant.
Overlap
A patent and a utility model cannot both be granted for the same invention, so the applicant chooses. The seven-year clock, however, always runs from the original filing date, even after conversion.
Worked example
A cap whose hinge replaces a metal pin with a living hinge is new and works. A skilled designer would reach it by routine substitution, so the patent application fails on inventive step. A utility model registration is available for seven years from filing. If the applicant had first filed a patent application and now wants the cheaper route, it converts before grant and keeps the original filing date, so part of the term is already consumed.
Traps
Assuming a 20-year term or a renewal; importing an inventive-step test; converting after grant; treating a utility model as protecting appearance, which belongs to industrial design; forgetting that the registration remains vulnerable to cancellation for lack of novelty.