Introduction
On 11 March 2020 the Ministry of Health announced that the first case of coronavirus (COVID-19) had been
diagnosed in Turkey. At the time of writing, 46 additional cases have been confirmed and the total number has reached up to 47.
This pandemic will inevitably affect labour law; as part of employers' duty to protect employees, they must take occupational health and safety measures and protect employees' health and physical and mental integrity. Employers'…
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The Course of Coronavirus Outbreak and Its Economic Impacts
Coronavirus, first seen in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, and causing Covid-19 (coronavirus disease), has spread to all continents except Antarctica and 127 countries in as little as three months, and as of the date of this article, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide has exceeded 134.000 while the number of deaths has exceeded 4.900. On March 12, 2020, World Health Organization declared coronavirus…
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What can content creators do to protect themselves?
Copyright protection is mainly regulated under Turkish Intellectual and Artistic Works Law No. 5846 (referred to as Law No. 5846 hereafter). As to the Turkish Copyright Law, protection shall start with the creation and publication of the work to the public which meets the conditions under the Law No. 5846. Therefore neither registration of the copyright owned work with any competent authority nor confirmation of the same is…
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In a decision published on 18 December 2019, the Turkish Court of Cassation (COC) ruled that trade marks inspired by descriptive words, which are not allowed to be monopolized, are weak trade marks and cannot be protected like trade marks with a high distinctiveness. Even small differences can make these trade marks distinctive, and owners of weak marks cannot oppose the registration of the same signs with different elements. Mutlu Yıldırım Köse explains
Plaintiff's…
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It has been three years since the Industrial Property Law, which combined different Decree Laws on specific IP rights, came into force. The fourth book of the Law introduces relatively new provisions regarding the patent system in Turkey that bring the national law into line with the European Patent Convention (EPC). Although it is too early for the implications of the new law to have come to light, working requirements and compulsory licensing remain the most questioned…
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The new IP Law (the “Law”) numbered 6769 abolished the provisions on “the use requirement of patents,” and “the evidence of use” of the Decree Law Pertaining to the Protection of Patent Rights. The Law now focuses on the requirements of use for patents within the provision of a Compulsory License.
Accordingly, a patent owner must make use of the patented invention within three years following publication of its granted decision in the Official Bulletin (‘the Bulletin’) or…
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The supply of pharmaceutical products to Turkey via the named patient programme (the “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 within the scope of the NPP are the Turkish Pharmacists’ Association (the “TEB”) and the Ibn-i…
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Although ex parte injunctions are legally available, are quite rare in Turkish Patent Law practice. The IP Courts almost always reject requests for ex parte injunctions, preferring to evaluate the alleged infringement only after hearing both parties. However, in 2019, the Turkish IP Court unexpectedly granted a request for an ex parte injunction, due to the urgent nature of the matter.
The request for this ex parte injunction was filed against a company in Argentina. The…
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Discovery of evidence and actions for determination of evidence are separately regulated under the Civil Procedural Law. Discovery of evidence is a preliminary step taken before any action on the merits, and it only serves to discover and record the evidence that may be relevant to an ongoing or future action on the merits.
It must be emphasised that unlike the US and UK systems, there is no full and frank disclosure procedure under Turkish civil law. In other words, the…
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Since Turkey’s inclusion as a member of the EPC, a hot topic has been the enforcement or invalidity of Turkish validation of European Patent(s) (“EP”) while proceedings before the European Patent Office (the “EPO”) are pending.
Once an EP is validated in Turkey, it becomes a national patent three months after its first granted decision by the Examination Board of the EPO. For EPs, the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office (the “TPMO”) acts only as a procedural agency. Thus, the…
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In 2018, the Istanbul IP Court decided on a generic pharmaceutical company’s damages claim based on an unjust PI, in what appears to be the first decision of its kind by the Turkish IP Courts within the pharmaceutical sector. The dispute between an originator firm and a generic firm derived from an infringement claim. The Court had issued a PI, which was lifted after 13 months based on the findings of an expert’s report, which found that no infringement had been made. The…
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In Turkey, the law explicitly states that pharmaceuticals which have their safety and efficacy proven through sufficient scientific and clinical studies within the direction of existing treatment guides, and are granted market authorisation by the Turkish Medicines and Medical Devices Agency (“Agency”) must be supplied only by pharmacies. However, the Agency is also competent to determine the exceptional importation regimes. Named Patient Program (“NPP”) is one of the…
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