What Article 273 of the Criminal Code punishes
Article 273 gives criminal-law protection to patents and utility models against unauthorised exploitation for industrial or commercial purposes. It punishes anyone who, without the holder's consent and knowing the item is registered, manufactures, imports, possesses, uses, offers or places on the market products covered by someone else's patent or utility model. It also covers anyone who uses or offers a process that is the subject of a patent, or who possesses, offers, markets or uses the product obtained directly through that patented process. The same protection extends to industrial or artistic designs and to semiconductor topography.
This is an intentional offence that requires the infringer to know the patent or model is registered: it is not enough to be unaware of someone else's industrial property right; the offender must know, or not reasonably be able to ignore, that the object or process was protected.
Penalty
The conduct carries six months to two years in prison and a fine of twelve to twenty-four months, whether it involves patents or utility models, or industrial or artistic designs and semiconductor topographies registered as such.
Common scenarios
This offence typically arises in the manufacture or import of technical parts, industrial components or machinery that reproduce an invention patented by a competitor, in the wholesale sale of non-original spare parts made by copying a patented process, or in marketing products that incorporate a registered industrial design without a licence. It is common in sectors such as the automotive industry, industrial machinery, consumer electronics or design furniture, where reverse-engineering a competitor's product can cross the line between fair competition and a criminal offence.
Defense strategy
The defense should carefully examine the actual scope of the claims of the patent or utility model allegedly infringed, since many charges rest on an overly broad reading of the registered right that an expert report from an industrial property specialist can dismantle. It is essential to prove, or challenge, the subjective element of knowledge of the registration: if the accused developed the product independently or reasonably did not know the patent existed, the intent required by the offence is missing. The validity of the patent relied upon should also be assessed —a void or expired patent cannot support the charge—, along with whether the facts, given their limited economic weight, should be resolved through civil or commercial channels rather than criminal ones. A parallel civil action for patent infringement does not automatically prove the criminal offence, since the civil standard of proof and the criminal one are not the same.