In Turkey, the prosecution of criminal offenses in trademark law depends on a proper complaint filed by the trademark owner. Once the complaint and the evidence is submitted to the local prosecutor’s office, the file is brought before the local Criminal Court. The Criminal Courts, however, become more and more reluctant to issue the decisions recently. Hence, it is now more important than ever for the trademark owners to be well-prepared before filing the complaint, in terms…
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Co-published
It has become common for a plaintiff in an invalidation or determination of non-infringement action to demand a precautionary injunction against a defendant patentee to prevent it from enforcing its patent rights against the plaintiff, although there is no explicit legal provision for this in the Turkish Patent Law or procedural law.
The grounds on which such demands are based are highly questionable, considering that a patent term is limited and the period…
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Headnote
The Turkish Court of first instance held that the liability for damages arising from an unfair preliminary injunction (where no infringement was found in the action on the merits) is a type of strict liability and therefore did not investigate whether the defendant was at fault when ruling that the conditions for compensation were deemed to be fulfilled. The decision given in this case is the first known decision in Turkey for the compensation of damages arising from…
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In 2017, both the Industrial Property Code No. 6769 (the IPC) and the Regulation on the Implementation of the IPC (the Regulation) were published and entered into force, uniting all IP rights in one Code which were previously regulated by different decree-laws.
The non-use defence in opposition proceedings was introduced with the IPC. According to the IPC if the trade mark claimed to be similar to the application is registered for more than 5 years as of the application date…
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In a very recent decision, the Re-examination and Evaluation Board (“Board”) of the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office (“Office”) has accepted that third party attempt to feminize the Johnnie Walker striding man logo and register the same to use it in fashion and textile sector may cause serial mark impression, and dilute the striding man logo and harm the distinctiveness and reputation of the same, even though it is only registered and well-known for alcoholic…
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FICPI – TURKEY arranged its fifth roundtable meeting on how goods/services similarity concept is interpreted in the doctrine of trademark law and also by the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office (“Office”) and the Courts and how the foreign courts and trademark offices practise on this matter. Ms. Yasemin Kenaroğlu, who is a member the Board of Directors of FICPI – TURKEY, moderated the meeting accompanied by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ali Paslı. 24 participants were present at the…
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Non-traditional trademarks refer to marks which are not traditionally perceived as trademarks. Some examples are colour, sound, motion, position and 3D views of products etc.
Non-traditional trademarks are not specifically described in the Turkish Industrial Property Code (the IP Code) which came into force on January 10 2017 in Turkey. Since there is no special provision in the code regarding the registration of non-traditional trademarks, the principles pertaining to the…
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The supply of pharmaceutical products to Turkey via the named patient programme (NPP) is one of the exceptional importation regimes for pharmaceutical products. Where a pharmaceutical product is not granted marketing authorisation in Turkey but patients are in need of it, it can be supplied via this special route. The entities that are authorised to import pharmaceuticals from abroad within the scope of the NPP are the Turkish Pharmacists’ Association (TEB) and the Ibn-i Sina…
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Discovery of evidence and actions for determination of evidence are separately regulated under the rocedural Law. Discovery of evidence is a preliminary step taken before any action on merits and it only serves to discover and record the evidence that may be relevant to an ongoing or future action on merits.
It must be emphasised that there is no full and frank disclosure procedure under the Turkish civil law system unlike the US and UK systems. In other words, the parties…
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Q: What options are open to a patent owner seeking to enforce its rights in your jurisdiction?
Article 149 of the Industrial Property Code 6769 (IP Code) sets the legal framework for claims that can be asserted by the rights holder and the scope of the injunctions that can be granted by the court.
Accordingly, a person can request the court to:
determine whether the third party infringes the patent;
decide on the prevention of the infringement;
decide to stop the action that…
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When the Industrial Property Law came into force on 10 January 2017, the introduction of the post grant opposition procedure for national patent applications or the new “satisfying national market’s need” criteria concerning compulsory license due to non-use of the patent appeared to be of the most significance. However, as usual, the devil was hidden in the detail. When we first put the new law into practice, we experienced that other provisions such as the use requirement…
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A discussion whether the freedom of expression is violated by prohibiting the access to a website where a trademark of a third company is used in the domain name was heard before the Turkish Constitutional Court (“the Court”) upon an individual application. In order to understand the ruling of the Court, it is worth looking at the history of the dispute.
Using a trademark of a reputable cargo company “yurtiçikargo” in a domain name as “yurticikargomagdurları.com”, having the…
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