Law of Patents Utility Model Protection : Harnessing the Backwaters of IP

Intellectual property rights (IPRs) have never been more economically and politically important or controversial than they are today. Empirical evidence on the role of intellectual property protection in promoting innovation and growth in general remains limited and inconclusive. Conflicting views also persist on the impacts of IPRs on development prospects. Some argue that in a modern economy, the minimum standards laid down in the TRIPS Agreement will bring benefits to developing countries by creating the incentive structure necessary for knowledge generation and diffusion, thus with a view to fostering local technological capacity, the concept of Utility model has come into prominence. Utility models are a form of patent-like protection for minor or incremental innovations. This article focuses on various aspects of utility model protection system which provides a supplementary alternate system to patent and industrial design protection system in order to protect the inventions particularly those of incremental nature having lower level of inventiveness. Since the innovators of these small inventions are unable to protect their inventions under the patent law for the grant of patent due to higher level of inventiveness, they have no other choice but to fell discouraged and stranded particularly in the countries where such system for protecting these inventions, does not exist. The role of utility model for technological and economic development of a country and suitability of this concept in India and U.S will also be looked into through this article. The successful implementation of Utility model system in various countries like Australia, Japan and Germany will also be analyzed. The various pros and cons like uncertainty and unfairness in protection, innovations and incentive theory will be highlighted by this article and also the misutilization of this model