By John Richards [1]

The term "petty patent" is no longer actually used anywhere in the world, its use in Australia having been superseded by the term “innovation patent” in 2001. [2] Recently, however, the term has acquired a secondary meaning, namely any type of protection that is provided for inventions that do not qualify for full patent protection. By far the best known of these are utility models, although other terms such as utility innovations, utility solutions and short term patents are used in some countries. [3]

Until just over a decade ago, an utility model protection was regarded as being something of a curiosity in the intellectual property world. It is true that the Washington revision of the Paris Convention in 1910 had recognized Utility Models as a species of industrial property right, but in his 1975 book "National and International Protection of Patents, Trademarks and Related Rights," Dr. Stephen Ladas listed as having this form of protection only in Brazil, Germany, Italy, Japan, The Philippines, Poland, Portugal, South Korea, Spain and Taiwan. Since then, however, many countries have adopted protection of this type or some other form of "second tier" protection for useful articles or other "low grade" inventions and in the past decade alone over a dozen countries have added legislation providing for protection of this type to their national laws. In Europe, the European Commission has issued a proposed directive on protection of inventions by utility models.