How to protect your IP rights in Turkey?
Turkey is a signatory to:
- The Paris Convention – which means that someone from another signatory state can apply for a patent or trade mark and expect the same rights as a national rights holder. Please click.
- The Hague Agreement Concerning the International Deposit of Industrial Designs (Geneva Act.) Please click.
- The Madrid Protocol which allows the owner of an application for or a registration of a trade mark and which is an entity in any of the other members of the Protocol a simple means of applying for registration of the trademark in Turkey. This is an alternative route for applying for registration of a trade mark in Turkey. Please click.
- The Patent Cooperation Treaty – which allows someone to obtain a set of patent applications, in different countries, through a single application. Please click.
- The Rome Convention – which extends copyright protection to performers, producers of phonograms and broadcasting organizations.
- The UPOV Convention – which lays down a harmonized system for plant breeders’ rights. Please click.
- The Berne Convention – which ensures that parties to the convention, give equal recognition to copyright holders from other convention member states. Please click.
- the TRIPS Agreement and a member of World Trade Organization (WTO). Please click.
Turkey is also a contracting State of the European Patent Convention. Please click.
For more infomation on "How to apply for trademark protection in Turkey?" please click.
Turkey's Legal Framework:
A range of criminal, civil and administrative laws are in place to support IP rights holders.
- Criminal Code
- Criminal Procedure Code
- Trademarks Decree Law
- Patent Decree Law
- Industrial Design Decree Law
- Geographical Signs Decree Law
For more information about Turkish Patent Institute please click.
For more information regarding the implementing rules/regulations please click.
For trademark/patent attorney search in any city of Turkey please click.
Regarding Intellectual Property Rights under EU Horizon2020 Programme:
Compared to the previous EU R&D Framework Programme (FP7) a number of new rules were integrated to Horizon 2020 aiming to simplify the regulations and streamline the process. Horizon 2020 acknowledges the importance of IP and makes it an integral part of a project implementation. The first thing you should keep in mind, from the very first moment you considering participating in a H2020 project is that you must effectively manage intellectual property within your project, especially in collaborative projects (with a lot of partners). By developing a solid IP strategy from the beginning you will avoid or at least you will be able to mitigate disagreements in terms of results ownership, use and even misappropriation of the IP that is created during the project.
Please visit EU IPR Helpdesk website to learn more about Intellectual Property in Horizon 2020.
To learn about IP Rights in Horizon 2020 in Turkey please see the th2020_ipr_brochure_eng_apr17.pdf
Please also see Turkey in H2020 website for IP Rights and relates issues in H2020. Please click.
Universities having Technology Transfer Offices
Universities also have several entities, like Technology Transfer Offices (TTO), for protecting the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) of researchers. IPR, Commercialization, University-Industry collaboration activities are the main tasks of TTOs. Please check the TTOs available in Turkey via the link Career Development.