In a recent case concerning trade mark law, the Turkish Court of Appeal ruled that even in cases of bad faith on the part of the defendant, the claimant can face the principle of loss of right due to silence as well as the barrier of abuse of the right to sue.
The decisions
As some readers may be aware, two German companies, Speck Pumpen Verkaufsgesellschaft GmbH and Winter Pumpen GmbH, had a dispute over the SPECK trade mark. This trade mark conflict included some actions…
»
COVID-19 outbreak, which was announced to be a pandemic by the World Health Organization on 11 March 2020[1], had inevitable impacts on corporate compliance processes due to the evolving business and workplace practices. In parallel with the increase in remote working, along with the psychological and financial distress on individuals emerging from the crisis, many companies have come up against a changing landscape for fraud with a rising number of fraud cases, as well as…
»
Introduction
When the new Code of Civil Procedure was enacted in 2011, it introduced a new case type to Turkish litigation, enabling plaintiffs to file actions for unquantified amounts of receivables, the determination of which is left to the courts. When filing such actions, plaintiffs must:
state the amount of determinable receivables as the minimum amount subject to the dispute;
pay a case fee based on this amount;
extend their claim to the amount calculated by the court;…
»
The following statements are intended to help clarify the current legal situation caused by COVID-19 in terms of contracts and are valid for contractual relations subject to Turkish law. If contracting parties choose a law other than Turkish law as the law to be applied to the contract, the following statements may not apply. In such cases, the matter would have to be interpreted according to the law under which the contractual relationship is governed.
1. What is Force…
»
1. Can processing personal data for the purpose of protecting public health within the scope of the struggle and measures taken to prevent the Covid-19 epidemic and its risk be considered as an exception under the Personal Data Protection Law in Turkey? What are the legal reasons for data processing within this scope?
Under Article 28 of the Law on the Protection of Personal Data No. 6698 ("Law No. 6698"), cases that may be exempted from the application of the Law are listed.…
»
Effects of Covid-19 pandemic on trademarks’ use requirement has been discussed globally and it is also a hot topic in Turkey. In order to discuss its effects, the grace periods provided for trademarks in the Turkish Industrial Property Code (“the IPC”) and justified reasons for non-use will be explained first. After giving an outline of the precautions taken against the Covid-19 pandemic in Turkey, we will provide our comments on the matter.
General Information Regarding the…
»
Amendments to Turkish Banking Law No. 5411 in February 2020 introduced important provisions regarding how banks handle confidential customer data. Based on these provisions, the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency introduced a secondary regulation that was finalized in March, the Regulation on Banks’ Information Technology and Electronic Banking Services. This regulation contains binding provisions related to data processing and transferring of bank…
»
Within the scope of the fight against the Covid-19, the provisional article 13, which was added to the Turkish Commercial Code ("TCC") on April 16, 2020, brought some restrictions on the dividend distribution rights of equity companies until 30 September 2020 and the exemptions regarding the companies covered by the regulation, the procedures and principles in relation to the practice were determined by the Communiqué issued by the Ministry of Commerce ("Ministry") and…
»
Sources of law
1. What are the main areas of law and regulation relating to product liability?
Turkey does not currently have specific legislation on product liability. However, the Product Safety and Technical Regulations Law 7223, which will enter into force on 12 March 2021, introduces a specific liability regime. This answer refers both to the current law and to the new product liability regime under Law 7223.
Product liability claims of a commercial nature are based…
»
Pursuant to Article 16 of the Data Protection Law, an obligation to register in the Data Controllers Registry has been introduced for data controllers.
In 2018, the Board issued decisions granting exemptions from registration obligation to certain professional groups, associations and political parties. The Board also granted a general exemption to local data controllers that have less than 50 employees, and actively less than TRY 25 million on their balance sheets.
Data…
»
The Data Protection Law requires data controllers to notify the relevant data subject and the Board as soon as possible when being made aware of such data breach. In its decision dated January 24, 2019 and numbered 2019/9, the Board clarified the rules and procedures to be applied in data breach incidents.
The Board takes the GDPR approach in terms of timing of breach notifications, and clarified that the term of “as soon as possible” must be interpreted as 72 hours of…
»
Sensitive and non-sensitive personal data can be transferred abroad if the explicit consent of the data subject is obtained.
Furthermore, other legal grounds will also apply to the transfer of personal data to the foreign country. However, the destination country must have “sufficient protection” in order to conclude the transfer abroad based on legal grounds (except for having obtained explicit consent). A list of jurisdictions that provide sufficient protection is to be…
»
