Leveraging the Chinese Utility Model to Protect Consumer Products
When in Rome Shenzhen (or Guangzhou or Ningbo) . . .
If your company sells consumer products in the U.S. or abroad, consider filing for a Chinese Utility Model (UM) to protect against copying—whether you manufacture in China or not. For companies outside China, the UM is often misunderstood and underused. But for inventive products with short life cycles and low manufacturing complexity—think consumer goods—the UM can be a valuable tool in a challenging manufacturing environment.
Who’s using the UM?
According to China’s National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA), over 3.1 million UM applications were filed in 2024. Although a country-by-country breakdown can be tough to find, my research appears to indicate that less than 1% of those applications were filed by non-Chinese entities. Why the disparity? One reason might be that the UM lacks a direct equivalent in the patent systems of most countries – most countries don’t have a utility model in their national patent laws – so companies patenting in their home country might not think about utilizing an “unknown” type of protection elsewhere. But Chinese companies clearly understand the UM’s core value: it’s a fast, affordable deterrent to copying. They know their business environment, and they know deterrents work.
Maybe they are on to something…
UM vs. Invention Patent: A Quick Comparison
The UM offers a limited but faster (and cheaper) right to an invention in China. Unlike the Invention Patent (China’s equivalent to a U.S., European, Japanese, or other national patent), the UM is examined only for inventiveness (generally limited to novelty-defeating prior art), and to ensure that it meets other legal formalities. It’s available only for mechanical technologies – so methods of making a product, software, hardware operating systems, pharmaceuticals, and life science inventions are excluded.
Other differences are outlined in the chart below. At first glance, the UM’s shorter term and enforcement hurdles may seem like drawbacks. But for consumer product companies, time to grant is often the most critical factor.
* For an apples-to-apples comparison, annuities are estimated over ten years – the full term of a UM, but only the first 10 years of the term of an Invention Patent.
The UM’s true advantage lies in how quickly it can be obtained.
Why Consumer Products Are Vulnerable
Consumer products are typically mass-produced goods designed for everyday use, often easy to manufacture at scale, and optimized for cost efficiency. They tend to be influenced heavily by trends, marketing, and shifting consumer preferences, which means many have relatively short market life cycles before being replaced or updated. While some categories are long-lasting, much of the sector is driven by fast-moving demand, rapid innovation, and the constant need to capture consumer attention. Given these factors, it’s critical that companies extract as much exclusivity as possible from their investments. Copycats target successful products to turn a quick profit.
Every deterrent matters.
The UM as a Fast, Affordable Deterrent
Growing up, I remember a commercial for a home security system where a sinister-looking crook stares into the camera and sneers “The house with a security system you skip, the rest you go for.” Patents work the same way. In China, where nearly everything can be copied and manufactured quickly, which products are more likely to get knocked off: those that are protected by an enforceable right or those that aren’t? True, the ultimate power of a UM or Invention Patent is the ability to bring suit to stop infringement, and such actions can be costly. But the deterrent factor of simply owning the enforceable right cannot be discounted.
Again, the UM’s advantage lies in its speed to grant. Obtaining a UM can be so fast, in fact, that it’s possible to obtain one before you even begin manufacturing or selling. Even if you don’t plan on manufacturing in China, most knock-off consumer goods come from there, so the UM is a way to stop infringement at a likely source.
And if you do manufacture in China, the deterrent can be effective against your own manufacturing partner. Many companies don’t own overseas manufacturing facilities; rather, they contract with third parties. A manufacturing agreement is critical, but relationships can sour. If they do, a UM discourages a recently-separated partner from continuing to manufacture and sell your product to others.
Final Thoughts
The quick path to grant makes the UM a very desirable tool for companies that sell consumer products. It should be on your list of options to seriously consider when deciding your foreign filing strategy, regardless of where you intend to manufacture or sell. But the UM is just the first step to protect your invention in China – a thorough multi-phase approach includes also filing an Invention Patent to the same invention, and using the UM to defend your rights while the Invention Patent is pending. But that’s a topic for another blog post, which will follow sometime in the future here.
