The Peruvian Patent Office (Direction of Inventions and New Technologies – INDECOPI), depending on the type of invention to be protected, includes three modalities: Patents of Invention, Utility Models and Designs, which differ in the type of creation, evaluation mode and protection time.
Difference between Patents of Invention and Utility Models: Patents of Invention protect products and processes that comply with an inventive step to solve a technical problem that had not been solved, on the other hand, for Utility Models the evaluation consists in the new form incorporated to the object, providing a technical advantage to the original element.
Utility Models are intended to protect any new shape, configuration or arrangement of elements, of any artifact, tool, instrument, mechanism or other object or a part thereof, allowing a better or different operation, use or manufacture of the object which incorporates or provides certain usefulness, advantage or technical effect that it did not have previously (Decision 486 – Article 81). Consequently, only claims of category of product can be protected by this modality, being the most relevant criteria for its protection novelty and technical advantage. The Patent of Utility Model does not require an analysis of inventive step, as in the case of a Patent of invention, but it is sufficient to demonstrate that the new form granted to the claimed product confers a technical advantage over what is described in the prior art.
Designs protect the particular appearance of a product resulting from any joining of lines or combination of colors, or any two-dimensional or three-dimensional external shape, line, contour, configuration, texture or material, without changing the destination or purpose of said Product (Decision 486 – Article 113). Designs must comply mainly with the criterion of novelty. The Peruvian Patent Office does not carry out an ex officio novelty examination unless the design manifestly lacks novelty or when there is an opposition to the registration of the design during the procedure (Article 124 of Decision 486).
The following are some relevant characteristics of Utility Models and Designs in Peru:
| Utility Model | Design | |
| Definition | Any new form, configuration or arrangement of elements, of an artifact, tool, instrument, mechanism or other object or a part thereof, allowing a better or different operation, use or manufacture of the object incorporating or providing it with any usefulness, advantage or technical effect that did not previously have. | The particular appearance of a product resulting from any joining of lines or combination of colors, or any two-dimensional or three-dimensional external shape, line, contour, configuration, texture or material, without changing the destination or purpose of product. |
| Criteria for registration | – Novelty
– Technical Advantage |
-Novelty |
| Processing time | 2-3 years | 6-9 months |
| Protection time | 10 years | 10 years |
| Renewal and Maintenance | Not aplicable | Not aplicable |
Design Sample: Candy container
Utility Model Sample: Ice bucket with lid that allows to easily remove the ice cubes.
