Patents

Italian Inventions

  1. Patentability conditions:
    1. Worldwide novelty: the object of the patent must not have been advertised, exhibited, published or sold, even by the applicant, in Italy or elsewhere, before the filing date.
    2. Inventive step: the object of the patent must not be obvious to the skilled man in the related technology filed.
    3. Applicability.
    4. Lawfulness: inventions that are contrary to morality or public order cannot be patented.
    Failure to comply to any or all of these requirements results in the patent being declared invalid.
  2. Validity period: up to 20 years from the filing date.
  3. Examination: the Italian Patent Office does not execute a search on novelty of the patent application.
    The examination relates to formal requirements only. On occasion the examiner may refuse to grant a patent, requiring conversion into a utility model application. This depends on the object of the invention.
  4. Fees: when filing a Patent Application, annual fees shall be paid for 3 years.
    Subsequent annual fees shall fall due at the end of the month of the anniversary (?) date.
  5. Unpatentable objects: the following objects cannot be patented in Italy:
    • Scientific theories and discoveries;
    • Mathematical methods;
    • Plans, principles and methods of intellectual activities, for games, business administration and computer software;
    • Presentations of information;
    • Methods for surgical or therapeutic treatment of the human body or of animals;
    • Diagnosis methods for THE human body or FOR animals.

Italian utility models

According to Italian Patent Law, a Utility Model protects an improvement (e.g. of the shape or of the combination of parts) of an already existing technical device.

If this improvement confers some special utility or ease of use, usually of low but not obvious nor negligible inventive step, it can be protected by a Utility Model.

  1. Patentability conditions:
    1. worldwide novelty;
    2. inventive step;
    3. applicability;
    4. lawfullness.
    failure to comply to any or all of these requirements results in the patent being declared invalid.
  2. Validity period: up to 10 years from the filing date.
  3. Examination: The examination relates to formal requirements only and not to novelty.
  4. Fees: when filing a Utility Model, the fee for the first-5-year period shall be paid. At the end of this first period, the maintenance fee for the second 5-year-period falls due.

Unpatentable objects: the same as for patents

Italian designs

  1. Patentability conditions:
    1. Novelty and “individual character”: an equal or similar model(s) shall not have been published, advertised, exhibited or be readily known to the informed user within the EU, before the filing date.

      The applicant is allowed a period of 12-months’ grace after the first public disclosure for filing a design application.

      The model(s) must also have an “individual character” I.E. it/they must give a different overall impression from any already known model(s).The model (or the models) must never have been published or advertised.
    2. Applicability
    3. Lawfullness
  2. Multiple applications with a single design application in Italy, an applicant is allowed to file up to 100 models at a flat rate, provided that all models belong to the same Locarno class (I.E. all models of jewellery, all models of pottery etc.)

    Long before the new EU design directive, Italy had allowed a multiple design filing system, with evident cost saving for applicants.
    This is one of the reasons why Italian design has seen such rapid development and is so famous worldwide.
  3. Validity period: up to 25 years from the filing date.
  4. Examination: The examination relates to formal requirements only and not to novelty or individual character.
  5. Fees: when filing an Italian design application, official fees shall be paid for the first 5 years. Designs can be renewed for up to 4 subsequent 5-year-periods, upon payment of fees, for a maximum of 25 years of protection.
    In the case of a multiple application, the whole renewal fee shall be paid for maintaining protection on a single model.