The General Assembly of the Court of Appeals has held that a registered trademark may be invalidated on the grounds of bad faith (Case 2008/11-501E 2008/507, July 16 2008, only recently published).
The case arose out of an action for the invalidation of the trademark RG 512 (and design) on the grounds that it was confusingly similar to the earlier mark RG 512 (and design). The earlier mark was not registered or used in Turkey, but was registered and used in other countries.…
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The Re-examination and Evaluation Board of the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office has reversed a decision of the Trademarks Department in which the latter had rejected claims of bad faith against a new application fıled by the applicant to avoid the consequences of a possible partial revocation of its earlier trademark.
Background
In November 2014 Microsoft Corporation fıled a trademark application in Turkey through WIPO for the mark POWER BI, covering specific goods in…
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In a recent decision, the Court of Appeal (the CoA) ruled that the well-known status of the GARANTİ mark for banking services would prevent registration of the KUTUP GARANTİ PLUS mark for different services.
In June 2012, a Turkish company, with the word KUTUP as the main element of its commercial name, applied to register the mark KUTUP GARANTİ PLUS in Classes 35, 37 and 40. The opponent, a renowned company in the banking sector owning many GARANTİ trade marks in several…
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Co-published
Last year, Turkey’s leading home appliance manufacturer filed two patent infringement actions, claiming the determination, prohibition and prevention of a patent infringement and seeking a preliminary injunction against an international company in the same sector for its coffee machine products.
The infringement actions were based on two patents protecting different features and methods of a Turkish coffee machine – the first electronic coffee machine dedicated…
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The provisions providing for “appropriate remuneration” to be mandatorily determined by arbitration contained in the Regulation on Employee Inventions, Inventions Made at Institutions of Higher Education and Public-Funded Projects have been widely discussed since the entry into force of the Regulation. However, the Council of State assessed the provisions on mandatory arbitration for employee inventions for the first time in a case filed for the stay of execution and…
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FICPI-Turkey arranged its fourth roundtable meeting regarding the rules for determining the closest state of the art document in the light of the Problem-Solution Approach used for the inventive step examination of a claim, and the definition of the objective technical problem solved by the claim. The issue of inventive step was reviewed based on the closest state of the art document and the effect of an examiner’s view with regard to inventive step based on the objective…
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In a decision dated 14 February 2018 (No E 2017/11-85 K. 2018/209, which became public in July 2018), the General Assembly of the Civil Court of Appeals held that an agreement between two parties restricting the use of a sign or trademark can later prevent the registration of that sign or mark.
Background
On 12 December 2004 Company A fıled an application for the registration of SULTANS OF THE DANCE, which was the name of a group performing Turkish modern folk dances formed…
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The Turkish Patent and Trademark Office (the Office) founded a company on April 2 2018 based in Ankara, called Türk Sınai Mülkiyet Değerleme Mühendislik ve Danışmanlık Hizmetleri Anonim Şirketi (TÜRKSMD). The company’s sole owner is currently the Office. TÜRKSMD will be able to pursue commercial purposes since it is founded as a corporation and is open to all nationalities, persons and institutions.
The primary aim of TÜRKSMD is to value intellectual property rights belonging…
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The fashion industry, nourished by an infinite source – that is, human creativity – is constantly changing, yet the manufacturing process changes even faster. As the duration of the process in which a product is manufactured and offered to consumers became much shorter, the copying of designs also became more convenient and common.
The rules pertaining to the protection of unregistered designs, one of the novelties introduced with the Industrial Property Code No 6769 (the ‘IP…
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The new Turkish Intellectual Property (IP) Code came into force on January 10, 2017 (as previously reported in the INTA Bulletin on February 15, 2017, Vol. 72, No. 3 and on October 15, 2017, Vol. 72, No. 18), and introduced a major change to Turkish trademark law and practice with respect to the non-use defense in opposition and litigation proceedings. Under the new law, the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office must notify the applicant of an opposition filed against its…
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Kent Gida Maddeleri San ve Tic AS v Nako Iplik Pazarlama ve Ticaret AS, the decision of the Turkish Court of Appeals numbered E. 2016/2539 K. 2017/4808 and dated 27 September 2017
The Turkish Court of Appeals (CoA) has upheld the first instance IP Court’s decision ruling for the invalidation of the ‘Nako Jelibon’ trade mark covering ‘threads’ in Class 23, on the basis that the registration would: (i) negatively affect the distinctiveness of the wellknown ‘Jelibon’ trade mark…
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When evaluating bad faith claims,
the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office (TPTO) considal matters, but predominantly if the trade mark is an original sign that was created by a prior right holder. In a recent decision, the Office made an exemplary decision concerning bad faith.
The trade mark Carducci is owned by House of Monatic (Pty) Limited of Republic of South Africa. The stylised sign was first created in 1978, yet the firm does not have an earlier registration in…
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