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CategoryPatent
Published31 July 2026
Authors
Uğurcan TekinPartner
Alican TekinPartner

Utility Model or Patent: What the Cheaper Right Actually Costs

The choice between a patent and a utility model is usually framed as a question of cost and speed. It is really a question of where the examination happens. A patent is examined before it is granted and can be attacked at the Office for six months afterwards. A utility model is examined for novelty only, cannot be opposed at the Office at all, and meets its first substantive challenge in an invalidity action. Whether that is a good trade depends on what the right is for.

Two Conditions Instead of Three

Article 82(1) of the Industrial Property Code No. 6769 provides that a patent is granted for inventions in all fields of technology which are new, involve an inventive step and are capable of industrial application. Article 142(1) provides that inventions which are new and capable of industrial application within the meaning of Article 83(6) are protected by the grant of a utility model.

The difference is what the second provision leaves out. Inventive step is not stated as a condition, and it is not examined. Article 142(2) adds a rule with no equivalent in the patent chapter: in assessing the novelty of a utility model, technical features which make no contribution to the subject matter of the invention are not taken into account — a provision aimed at applications padded with immaterial detail to manufacture a difference from the prior art.

The same invention, two regimes: one tested before grant, the other tested only in court.

What a Utility Model Cannot Cover

Article 142(3) excludes four categories, and the exclusions are broader than most summaries suggest. Inventions relating to chemical and biological substances, or to chemical and biological processes or the products of such processes, are excluded. Inventions relating to pharmaceutical substances, or to pharmaceutical processes or the products of such processes, are excluded. Biotechnological inventions are excluded. And inventions relating to processes, or to the products obtained by such processes, are excluded.

The last of those is the operative one. A utility model is available for product inventions only; no process claim can be protected by a utility model in Türkiye, in any field. An applicant whose invention lies in a method — a manufacturing sequence, a treatment step, a control routine — has no utility model route at all, however simple the invention.

Article 145(1) applies the patent provisions to utility models where there is no express provision and no conflict with the nature of the right, which means the general exclusions in Article 82(2) and Article 82(3) — discoveries, mathematical methods, business methods, computer programs, presentations of information, inventions contrary to public order or morality, therapeutic and diagnostic methods and the rest — apply here as well.

The Search Report Is Compulsory; the Examination Does Not Exist

Under Article 143(5), the applicant must request a search and pay its fee within two months of the notification that the application meets the formal requirements, failing which the application is deemed withdrawn. This was one of the substantive changes made by the Code: under the previous Decree-Law No. 551 a utility model could be obtained without any search at all, which is the source of the reputation the right still carries.

What the Code did not add is substantive examination. There is no examination report and no assessment of inventive step at any stage. Article 143(8) allows third parties to file observations and documents within three months of publication of the search report, and Article 143(7) gives the applicant three months to respond where a ground for refusal appears — but these are pre-grant steps.

“Article 143(11) closes the Office's door. Once a utility model is granted, there is no opposition procedure; the only route is an invalidity action in court.”

Set that against Article 99(1), under which a granted patent may be opposed at the Office within six months of publication of the decision to grant, on grounds of patentability, insufficiency of disclosure or added matter, with the Board empowered to maintain, maintain as amended, or revoke. A patent proprietor who survives that six months holds a right that a third party has already tried and failed to remove. A utility model proprietor holds a right nobody has tested.

Article 143(13) states the position plainly: the grant of a utility model does not amount to a guarantee of validity by the Office. Article 144 lists the invalidity grounds — failure to meet Article 142, insufficient disclosure under Article 92(1), added matter, and failure to establish entitlement under Article 109 — and Article 144(3) allows the action during the term of protection or within five years of its expiry.

Ten Years, and the Fees Run the Same Way

Article 101(1) sets the term at ten years from the filing date for a utility model against twenty for a patent, neither extendable. The annual fee regime in Article 101(2) to (5) applies to both: fees fall due on the anniversary of the filing date starting from the expiry of the second year, may be paid late with a surcharge within six months, and where they are not, the right lapses subject to the two-month restoration window that runs from the Office's notification.

Conversion Runs in Both Directions, Once

Article 104(1) allows a patent applicant to request conversion of a pending application into a utility model application. There is no fixed deadline; the condition is that proceedings are still in progress, which in practice means before a final decision. The applicant then has one month from the request to file the required documents and pay the search fee, failing which the request is deemed not to have been made.

Article 104(2) runs the other way and is time-limited: a utility model applicant may request conversion into a patent application no later than the expiry of the three-month period following notification of the search report. The same one-month document and fee requirement applies.

Two further rules matter. Article 104(4) preserves any priority claimed for the converted application. Article 104(5) provides that an application already converted cannot be converted again — the option exists once, in one direction.

Article 145(2) prohibits double protection: the same person or its successor may not obtain more than one patent or utility model, or both, independently, for the same invention with the same scope of protection. The two rights are alternatives for a given claim scope, not a portfolio strategy to be run in parallel.

How the Choice Should Actually Be Made

Three questions decide it, and cost is not the first of them.

Does the invention lie in a product or in a process? If the contribution is a method, the utility model route does not exist and the question is closed. If the product embodies the contribution and the method is incidental, a utility model may cover what matters.

How long is the commercial life? A right that will be superseded within a product generation does not benefit from twenty years of term, and the annual fees on a patent rise steeply in the second decade. Where a design cycle turns over in five to seven years, the ten-year term is not a real limitation.

Will the right be enforced, and against whom? This is where the absence of examination is decisive. A utility model asserted against a competitor with counsel will draw an invalidity counterclaim, and the proprietor will then be litigating the validity of a right whose inventive step no examiner has ever considered. A patent that has survived Article 99 opposition arrives in court with a materially different record. Where the purpose is deterrence in a market of small imitators, a utility model does the work; where the purpose is to hold a position against a serious competitor, the examination is the point of the exercise, not an overhead.

A pragmatic middle route follows from Article 104(2): file as a utility model, obtain the compulsory search report, and convert to a patent within the three months following its notification if the report shows the invention is likely to withstand examination on inventive step. The conversion window is short, it is single-use, and it closes on a date fixed by the search report — so the decision has to be prepared before the report arrives, not after.

Sources

  • Industrial Property Code No. 6769, Articles 82, 83, 92, 99, 101, 104, 109 and 142 to 145
  • TÜRKPATENT — patent and utility model transaction fees, 2026 tariff (conversion items 01.01.19 and 01.01.56)
  • Communiqué on the fee tariff to be applied by TÜRKPATENT in 2026, Official Gazette of 31 December 2025 (5th repeated issue)
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