The "patent" in German intellectual property legal system is similar to China's invention patent, and "Gebrauchsmuster" is equivalent to China's utility model.
Most European countries provide patent protection through the European Patent Office or the National Patent Office. Among the countries with higher economic status, only some countries (Germany, Spain and Italy) have utility model systems. In these countries, the German utility model system provides a cheap and efficient measure to protect intellectual property rights, and can cover more than 80 million German residents. Probably for this reason, the number of utility model patent applications received by the German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA) can reach as much as 30% of the patent applications. In 20 17, the number of German utility model applications was about 19000 (while the number of invention patent applications was about 60000).