Patent or Utility Model in Türkiye: Which Fits, and When

Two Rights, One Statute, One Office

Industrial Property Law No. 6769 (Sınai Mülkiyet Kanunu) devotes its fourth book to patents (patent) and utility models (faydalı model). Both are applied for at the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office (Türk Patent ve Marka Kurumu), both are built from the same materials — a description, claims and, where needed, drawings — and both give the holder a registered right that can be asserted against third parties working the invention in Türkiye.

The difference between them is not a difference of rank. It is a difference in what the applicant has to prove, how long the right survives, what subject matter it can reach, and how it is attacked once granted. Those four variables are decided at the moment of filing, and by the time a competitor appears they are usually no longer open to revision. For a company bringing a product into the Turkish market, or licensing a technology to a Turkish manufacturer, the choice deserves the same attention as the choice of corporate vehicle.

The wider industrial property framework has been moving in recent years — our note on the 2025 administrative cancellation regime describes a shift that affects trademarks rather than patents, but it illustrates how much of the system now runs through administrative procedure rather than court files. Patents and utility models have kept their own procedural logic, set out below. Our intellectual property practice covers both registries.

Novelty Applies to Both, Inventive Step Only to Patents

Article 82(1) of Law No. 6769 states the patent test: an invention in any field of technology is patentable if it is new, involves an inventive step, and is capable of industrial application. Article 83 then defines each element. An invention is new if it does not form part of the state of the art (tekniğin bilinen durumu), and the state of the art covers everything made available to the public anywhere in the world before the filing date — in writing, orally, by use, or in any other way. There is no territorial limit and no medium limit. A trade fair demonstration in another country counts.

Inventive step is defined in Article 83(4): the invention must not be obvious to a person skilled in the relevant technical field.

Article 142(1) is where the two rights part company. A utility model is granted for an invention that is new within the meaning of Article 83(1) and industrially applicable within the meaning of Article 83(6). Inventive step is simply not among the conditions. An improvement that a skilled engineer would have arrived at without difficulty may still support a valid utility model, provided nothing identical existed before the filing date.

One refinement applies only to utility models. Under Article 142(2), technical features that make no contribution to the subject matter of the invention are disregarded when novelty is assessed. Padding the claims with incidental detail does not create novelty that the substance of the invention lacks.

What a Utility Model Cannot Cover

The exclusions applicable to patents apply to utility models as well, and then some more are added.

Article 82(2) lists matter that is not regarded as an invention at all: discoveries, scientific theories and mathematical methods; schemes, rules and methods for mental acts, business activities or games; computer programs; aesthetic creations and literary, artistic and scientific works; and presentations of information. The exclusion bites only on the listed subject matter itself, which is why a technical process controlled by software may still be patentable while the program as such is not.

Article 82(3) then removes further categories from patentability on policy grounds, including inventions contrary to public order or morality, plant varieties and animal breeds, essentially biological production processes, and diagnostic, surgical and therapeutic methods applied to the human or animal body. Substances and compositions used in those methods remain patentable under Article 82(6).

Article 142(3) adds four exclusions that apply to utility models alone:

• chemical and biological substances, chemical and biological processes, and products obtained by such processes;
• pharmaceutical substances and processes, and products obtained by such processes;
• biotechnological inventions;
• processes, and products obtained by processes.

The last item is the one that surprises applicants most often. A method claim cannot be protected by a utility model in Türkiye in any technical field. For chemistry, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and process engineering, the decision between the two rights therefore does not arise: the patent route is the only one open.

Twenty Years and Ten Years, Counted from Filing

Article 101(1) sets both terms in a single sentence. Counted from the filing date, the term of protection is twenty years for a patent and ten years for a utility model, and these periods cannot be extended.

Two consequences follow. First, the clock starts at filing, not at grant. Every month spent in prosecution is a month subtracted from the enforceable life of the right, which is one reason applicants who need early certainty sometimes accept a narrower claim set rather than argue.

Second, the ten-year utility model term is not a renewable licence. It ends. Where a product line is expected to remain on the market for fifteen or twenty years, a utility model buys protection for a period that may end well before the commercial value does — and the invention cannot then be re-filed, because by that point it will long since have entered the state of the art through its own publication and use.

Where the product cycle is three to seven years, which is common for components, tooling, packaging formats and mechanical accessories, the ten-year term is not a real constraint. It is worth mapping the expected commercial life of the product against the two terms before the first filing is made, rather than after.

Search Report and Examination: Two Different Roads

The patent route passes through a search report and a substantive examination. In outline, the applicant requests search within twelve months of the filing date — no notification is sent, the period runs from filing itself — the application is published eighteen months after the filing or priority date, and examination must then be requested, with payment of the fee, within three months of the date on which the search report is notified to the applicant. That is the date the Law fixes, and it is not the same event as publication of the report in the Bulletin: Article 96(2) treats notification to the applicant and publication in the Bulletin as two separate steps. Missing either deadline means the application is deemed withdrawn. The examiner then assesses novelty, inventive step and industrial applicability, and may issue more than one examination report before a decision. Once the grant is published, third parties may oppose before the Office within six months.

The utility model route, governed by Article 143, works differently. There is no substantive examination for inventive step, because inventive step is not a condition. But a search report is compulsory. Under Article 143(5), the applicant must request it — with the application itself, or within two months of being told that the formal requirements are met or the formal deficiencies cured — and pay the fee. Failing that, the application is deemed withdrawn. Before Law No. 6769 took effect in January 2017, a Turkish utility model could be obtained without any prior art search at all; that is no longer possible, and the change materially improved the quality of the register.

The report is notified to the applicant and published in the Bulletin. Under Article 143(8) the applicant may object to its content, and third parties may file observations, within three months of publication. The Office weighs the report together with any objections or observations, and decides. If amendments are needed for grant, Article 143(10) allows two months to make them.

Two points deserve emphasis. Article 143(11) provides that the Office opposition procedure is not available after a utility model is granted: the only route is an invalidity action before the courts, which belongs to the world of patent litigation and dispute resolution rather than registry practice. And Article 143(13) states that grant is not to be read as an Office guarantee of validity or usefulness, and creates no liability on the Office. A utility model certificate is a registered right, not a certificate of soundness.

The law also contemplates movement between the two tracks — Article 143(6) refers to a search request made under Article 104(1), and Article 104 is the provision on conversion, under which a pending patent application may be turned into a utility model application and a pending utility model application into a patent application. Amendment of an application is dealt with separately, in Article 103. Whether conversion helps in a given file depends on where the application stands and what the search has revealed.

Routes into Türkiye for a Foreign Applicant

Türkiye is party to the Paris Convention, the Patent Cooperation Treaty and the European Patent Convention, and Article 83(3) of Law No. 6769 reflects all three in its definition of prior art.

Priority. A first filing abroad supports a Turkish filing claiming priority within the twelve-month Paris period. The priority date, not the Turkish filing date, then governs the novelty assessment.

PCT national phase. An international application designating Türkiye enters the national phase before the Turkish Office within thirty months of the priority date, or of the international filing date where no priority is claimed. It is worth being precise about where that period comes from: the Law itself sets no deadline. Article 83(3)(a) refers to national phase entries made under Articles 22 and 39 PCT “in accordance with the conditions laid down in the implementing regulation”, and it is the Implementing Regulation, not the Law, that fixes the thirty months. Article 83(3)(a) does expressly recognise such entries as both patent and utility model applications, which means the PCT can be used to reach the utility model register in Türkiye as well. Turkish translations of the application documents are required.

European patent. Türkiye is a designated state under the EPC, and Article 83(3)(b) recognises European applications based on an international application that satisfy Article 153(5) EPC, as well as European applications in which Türkiye was designated and the designation fee paid under Article 79(2) EPC. After grant by the European Patent Office, the patent must be validated in Türkiye by filing a Turkish translation within the period set by the implementing rules; missing that period leaves the European patent without effect in Türkiye. The EPC route produces patents only — there is no European utility model.

One detail is easy to overlook. Article 83(3) makes earlier-filed but later-published applications part of the state of the art for novelty, while Article 83(5) excludes those same documents from the inventive step assessment. A competitor’s unpublished earlier filing can therefore destroy novelty without contributing to obviousness — a real risk in crowded fields, and a reason to run a freedom-to-operate check that looks beyond published files.

Representation is not a matter of convenience for foreign applicants. Under Article 160(3) of Law No. 6769, persons whose domicile is abroad may act before the Office only through a trademark or patent attorney entered in the Office’s register, and a step taken by the party in person, without such representation, is treated as not having been taken at all. That sanction is what makes the point practical: a response filed directly by a foreign applicant does not merely attract an objection, it fails to stop the clock. The mechanics resemble those we set out for trademarks in our guide for foreign owners, and the address for service recorded at filing governs every notification that follows.

Annual Fees, Lapse as of the Due Date, and a Narrow Restoration

Article 101(2) sets the maintenance regime. Annual fees are payable throughout the term of protection: the first falls due on the date on which the second year ends, counted from the filing date, and one falls due in each following year. The due date is the month and day corresponding to the filing date. Diary entries should therefore be keyed to the filing date, not to the grant date or the certificate date.

If the fee is not paid on the due date, Article 101(3) allows payment within six months of that date together with a surcharge. If it is still unpaid at the end of that six-month period, Article 101(4) provides that the right terminates as of the due date — not as of the end of the grace period. The lapse is notified to the holder and published in the Bulletin, and the notification must be made at the latest by the end of one year running from the due date on which the right ended.

The holder then has two months from the date of that notification to pay a restoration fee (telafi ücreti). Payment revives the right as of the date of payment, and the revival is published. Article 101(5) adds an important qualification: revival does not affect rights acquired by third parties during the gap, and the extent of those third-party rights is determined by the court. A competitor who began working the technology in reliance on the published lapse may keep the benefit of having done so.

Annual fees also run for utility models, though the basis for that is indirect and worth spelling out. Article 101(2) speaks only of the fees required for “a patent application or the protection of a patent”, and the utility model provisions contain no express annuity rule of their own. The link is Article 145, which applies the patent provisions of the Law to utility models wherever there is no express utility model rule and the patent rule does not conflict with the nature of a utility model. On that footing the annuity regime, and the lapse and restoration mechanics that go with it, carry across — so the ten-year term does not exempt a holder from the diary. Where a portfolio covers several product families, the cumulative annuity budget is often what decides how many rights are worth keeping alive into their later years.

Choosing Between Them: A Practical Frame

The following questions usually resolve the choice.

Is the subject matter eligible? If the invention is a process, a chemical or biological substance, a pharmaceutical or a biotechnological invention, Article 142(3) closes the utility model door and the question ends there.

Would the invention survive an inventive step objection? An incremental mechanical or electromechanical improvement — a fastening arrangement, a fixture, a modified geometry — may be genuinely new and still be found obvious. The utility model exists for precisely this category, and it is the reason a great many Turkish manufacturers hold utility models rather than patents.

How long does the product need protection? Ten years is a real limit and it cannot be extended.

How will the right be used? For licensing negotiations, joint venture contributions and due diligence in a share purchase, an examined patent carries more explanatory weight than an unexamined right, and the difference tends to surface in corporate transactions before it surfaces in litigation.

How will it be enforced? Both rights support infringement proceedings, and both are vulnerable to a validity attack in response. Because a utility model is granted without an inventive step examination and cannot be opposed at the Office, the validity contest happens entirely in court, where the defendant will build its case on the search report. Border measures — the mechanism familiar from our note on customs seizure of counterfeit goods — are most often used for trademark matters, and their availability for a given patent or utility model dispute should be assessed on the facts, alongside our customs law and patent litigation practices.

None of this needs to be decided in the abstract. It needs to be decided before the first filing, because the state of the art is fixed on that day and the term begins running the same day. For a broader look at Turkish industrial property law, see our analysis on SMK and IP enforcement, our guide to trademark registration, and our intellectual property practice.

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Related Practice Areas

• Intellectual Property
• Trademark Registration & Litigation
• Patent Litigation
• Copyright & Anti-Piracy