Article 104
(1) The patent applicant can demand their pending application to be transformed into a utility model application. The Office, in case such a demand is made, notifies the applicant that he is required to submit the required documents within a month as of the date of the notification and request a search paying the search fee. In case of unfulfillment of necessary conditions within this time period, the transformation request will be considered as not made and the application will continue to be processed as a patent application. In case of fulfillment of necessary conditions within this time period, the provisions of paragraph 6 and 11 of Article 143 will apply to the application.
(2) The utility model applicant can request their utility model application to be transformed into a patent application until the end of the three-month time period following the date of the notification of search report at the latest. The Office, in case such a demand is made, notifies the applicant that they are required to submit the required documents within a month as of the date of the notification and request a search paying the search fee. In case of unfulfillment of necessary conditions within this time period, the transformation request will be considered as not made and the application shall continue to be processed as a utility model application. In case of fulfillment of necessary conditions within this time period, the provisions of this Code regarding granting a patent shall apply.
(3) In case the application shall be published, the decision of the Office on confirmation of transformation of the patent application into utility model application or the utility model application into patent application shall be published on the Bulletin.
(4) In case the patent application shall be transformed into a utility model application or the utility model application shall be transformed into a patent application, the same priority right shall also be recognized for the transformed application, if a priority right has been requested for the transformed application.
(5) Retransformation requests made for patent applications that have been transformed into utility model applications or for utility model applications that have been transformed into patent applications shall not be admitted to process.
(6) The procedure and rules regarding transformation of a patent application into a utility model application or a utility model application into a patent application shall be determined by a regulation.