Getting License for a Utility Model Becomes Faster

On December 5, the Government approved a draft law by the Ministry of Economic Development on the protection of rights to inventions, utility models, industrial designs and trademarks According to the rules in force, the similar results of intellectual activity, both like inventions and useful models, can be protected by law. At the same time, obtaining a patent for a utility model gives a number of advantages over obtaining a patent for an invention: less time and financial costs, fewer patentability requirements, lower risks of recognizing the rights invalid the rights.

The consequence of such a policy in the field of intellectual property rights protection is a disproportional balance created between the registered utility models and inventions to the advantage of the first if compared with the highly innovative economies.

A great number of patents for utility models issued without proper examination and the lack of the post-grant opposition procedures (the possibility of appealing for the granted patents) leads to an abuse of intellectual property rights and weakens the rights protection of bona fide owners.

The protection of utility models concept proposed by the draft law provides the possibility to quickly obtain a patent for a utility model; to quickly cease the activity of the unscrupulous owners (the so-called “trolling” patents), as well as the possibility of recognizing invalid the rights to the utility model by contacting the Appeals Chamber with the Ministry of Economic Development.

In respect of inventions and utility models, the list of objects and technologies, which are no legal protection objects, is expanded. Such action will limit the abuse potential when registering nuisance patents.

The draft law also provides the possibility of filing patent applications registration in electronic form and giving the opportunity to any person to appeal against patent registration within 6 months from the date of registration (“post-grant opposition”).

An additional criterion for the protection of industrial designs is created, namely, its individual character ( the exterior, shape and lines structure, the color combination, the texture of the material of a particular product or its part). The draft provides the legal protection of unregistered industrial designs, the submission of an application for registration in electronic form, the term of validity of rights is for a period of up to 25 years ( it is 15 years now)The Bill also changes the type of document security – from a patent to a certificate and provides the possibility of pre-trial revocation of a certificate in the Appeals Chamber (this is said to prevent “patent trolling”).

For trademarks, the Bill provides the filing of an application for the registration in electronic form, specifies the grounds of refusal to register or to invalidate registration, and also provides the possibility of registering a corporate trademark.

The Ministry of Economic Development expects the adoption of this draft by the Parliament to contribute to the achievement of the European level of protection of intellectual property rights on industrial property objects and to intensify the inventive activity (source: the official web portal of the Ministry of Economic Development).