If a Turkish distributor, agent or local partner has registered your brand in its own name, you have not lost the mark, and Turkish law addresses this situation by name. Article 6(2) of Industrial Property Law No. 6769 (Sınai Mülkiyet Kanunu) allows the true owner to have such a filing refused, and Article 10 allows a court to order that the registration be transferred to the owner rather than merely cancelled. The reason this is nonetheless urgent is Article 25(6): an owner who knew the later mark was being used and stayed silent for five consecutive years loses the right to rely on its own mark as an invalidity ground, unless the later registration was made in bad faith.
Türkiye registers trademarks on a first-to-file basis. Protection is obtained through registration, and reputation built elsewhere does not create a Turkish right on its own — the starting point set out in our guide to trademark registration in Türkiye for foreign owners. That is why this problem arises so often, and so quietly: the local partner is the one dealing with the Office, the packaging and the customs paperwork, and the owner discovers the filing only when the relationship sours.
What Article 6(2) Actually Says
The provision is short and every element in it matters. It provides that an application filed by a commercial agent or representative (ticari vekil veya temsilci), in its own name, for the same mark or one indistinguishably similar to it, without the owner’s consent and without relying on a justified reason, is refused upon the owner’s opposition.
Four elements, then. The applicant must have been a commercial agent or representative. The mark must be identical or indistinguishably similar — not merely confusable. The owner must not have consented. And the applicant must have no justified reason (haklı sebep).
The first element is where these cases are won or lost, because the trademark book of Law No. 6769 does not define what a commercial agent or representative is for this purpose. A party that bought goods in its own name and for its own account and resold them at its own risk will argue that it was a buyer, not a representative. A party that held a written appointment, used the owner’s letterhead, ran the local marketing budget or registered the domain will find that argument much harder to make.
The fourth element is the one clients underestimate. “Justified reason” is not the same as an excuse. A distributor who can show it was asked in writing to secure local protection, or that the owner refused for years to file while requiring the distributor to spend on the brand, is arguing within the text of the statute rather than around it.
Article 10: Ask for the Registration, Not Just an Injunction
Article 10 carries the heading “claims concerning a trademark registered in the name of a commercial agent or representative” and gives the owner two things. Where the same or an indistinguishably similar mark has been registered in the name of a commercial agent or representative without the owner’s consent, and that agent or representative has no justified reason, the owner may ask the court to prohibit use of the mark and may also ask that the registration be transferred to the owner.
That second remedy is the practically important one, and it is easy to overlook when a file is framed simply as “cancel their registration”. Cancellation under Article 25 removes the entry. Under Article 27(1), an invalidity decision takes effect from the application date and the protection is treated as never having arisen — a clean result, but it leaves the mark unregistered in Türkiye and the register open again. A transfer under Article 10 hands the owner the existing entry, with the filing date and the class coverage the distributor secured, which in a crowded class may be worth more than the litigation itself.
Choosing the Route: Office or Court
| Route | Forum | Window / trigger | What it delivers | Main limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Opposition (yayıma itiraz) | TÜRKPATENT | Two months from publication of the application (Art. 18(1)); grounds and fee within the same period | Refusal of the application before it becomes a right | Only available while the mark is still an application |
| Appeal against the decision (karara itiraz) | TÜRKPATENT Board | Two months from notification of the decision (Art. 20(2)); no new grounds after that period | The Office's final decision (Art. 21(4)) | Grounds are frozen; the record is what you filed |
| Invalidity (hükümsüzlük) | IP court (Art. 156(1)) | Any Article 5 or 6 ground, including Art. 6(2) (Art. 25(1)) | Registration removed with effect from the application date (Art. 27(1)) | Article 25(6) acquiescence bar |
| Transfer of the registration | IP court | Agent or representative registration without consent and without justified reason (Art. 10) | The existing entry, with its filing date, moved to the owner | Requires the agent/representative characterisation to hold |
| Revocation for non-use (iptal) | TÜRKPATENT (Art. 26) | No genuine use in Türkiye for five years from registration (Art. 9(1)) | Revocation, as a rule effective from the date the request was filed (Art. 27(2)); an earlier date may be ordered on request | Art. 9(3): use with the proprietor's consent counts as its use |
Two features of the table deserve a note. The opposition window is genuinely two months and it is not only a deadline for saying “we object”: Article 18(2) requires the reasoned grounds and the fee within that same period, failing which the opposition is treated as never having been filed. A second, technical limit is often assumed the wrong way round: Article 19(2) allows a proof-of-use request only against oppositions brought under Article 6(1), so an applicant facing an opposition based on Article 6(2) cannot put the opponent to proof of use. The mechanics of that stage, including the grounds available and how they interact, are set out in our note on trademark opposition in Türkiye.
The revocation route also changed recently. Article 192(1)(a) delayed the entry into force of Article 26 by seven years from publication, so administrative revocation before the Office became available on 10 January 2024; before that, Provisional Article 4 had the courts exercise the power under the same rules. What the move from the courts to the Office means for trademark strategy is taken up in our note on TÜRKPATENT’s administrative cancellation regime.
Who sues whom should be settled just as early. Article 25(2) allows invalidity to be sought by those with an interest, by public prosecutors and by the relevant public institutions; Article 25(3) provides that the action is brought against the person recorded in the register as the proprietor on the date the action is filed, or its successors in title, and that the Office is not joined as a party to trademark invalidity actions. For a foreign owner the practical consequence is that the opponent is the distributor rather than the Office — and if the entry has been moved to a connected company while the claim is being prepared, the action has to follow the new registered holder. Where a licence structure exists in Türkiye, Article 158(1) lets an exclusive licensee bring the proprietor’s actions in its own name unless the contract provides otherwise, while a non-exclusive licensee must first call on the right holder under Article 158(2) and may sue in its own name if that call is refused or goes unanswered for three months.
The Five-Year Bar, Including When It Runs Against You
Article 25(6) is the provision that turns a strong case into a lost one. Where the owner knew, or should have known, that a later-dated mark was being used, and stayed silent for five consecutive years, the owner cannot invoke its own mark as a ground of invalidity — unless the later registration was made in bad faith.
Read the trigger closely. It is knowledge of use, not knowledge of the registration, and “should have known” is in the text, so a company that receives Turkish market reports, attends the same trade fairs and audits its own distributor will struggle to argue it was in the dark. The bad-faith carve-out sits in the same sentence, and in agent cases it is frequently the argument that saves the claim — but it has to be proved, with the correspondence, the appointment terms and the timing of the filing, rather than asserted from the fact of the relationship.
There is a second, wider version of the same idea outside Article 25(6). Loss of rights through acquiescence (sessiz kalma yoluyla hak kaybı) is not confined to invalidity claims. Its statutory basis is the honesty principle in Article 2 of the Turkish Civil Code No. 4721, under which everyone must act in accordance with the rules of good faith in exercising rights, and the legal order does not protect the manifest abuse of a right. Two consequences follow from the wording of that article. A defence built on the honesty principle does not shelter a party found to have acted in bad faith; Article 25(6) of Law No. 6769 follows the same line, attaching no consequence to silence where the later registration was made in bad faith. And because Article 2 sets no period, the law does not fix how many years of silence lead to loss of rights in infringement claims; the court assesses that against the circumstances of the case and the honesty principle, which means a claim may be met with an acquiescence defence in less than five years, or survive beyond it.
Neither reading of the doctrine rewards delay. Both reward a documented, dated internal record of when the use became known and what the owner did next.
What the Other Side Will Argue
Expect four defences, and prepare the file around them.
“We were never your representative.” The characterisation point discussed above. This is answered with the appointment letter, the exclusivity terms, the marketing contributions, the use of the owner’s artwork and the correspondence in which the distributor described itself as such.
“We had a justified reason.” Usually built on instructions to protect the brand locally, or on the owner’s own inaction. Answered with the instructions actually given, and with what the owner did when it learned of the filing.
“You waited.” Article 25(6), plus the wider acquiescence doctrine. Answered by fixing the date of knowledge and showing what happened after it.
“You have no Turkish right.” This is the defence that catches owners who reach for Article 155. That provision prevents a right holder from raising its own industrial property right as a defence in an infringement action brought by a holder with an earlier priority or filing date — which presupposes that the claimant has such a date. An owner who never filed in Türkiye does not, and the claim has to be built on Article 6(2), Article 6(3) or bad faith instead. Note also Article 30(5): a Turkish registration is a precondition of criminal liability, and under Article 30(6) prosecution depends on a complaint.
Evidence That Decides the Characterisation
Because Law No. 6769 leaves “commercial agent or representative” undefined in this context, the outcome usually turns on documents that were created for commercial reasons years before anyone thought about litigation. They are worth collecting before the claim is framed, not after.
| Document | What it is offered to prove | Which element it goes to |
|---|---|---|
| Appointment or distribution agreement, and its renewals | That the party acted for the owner in the Turkish market, on defined terms | Agent or representative status (Art. 6(2), Art. 10) |
| Correspondence about branding, artwork and packaging approvals | That the mark and its get-up came from the owner and were used under the owner's control | Absence of consent to registration; bad faith (Art. 6(9)) |
| Invoices, customs entries and shipping records | That the goods bearing the mark originated with the owner | Prior use of the sign in trade (Art. 6(3)) |
| Catalogues, fair attendance, price lists and local advertising | That the sign was used in trade in Türkiye before the distributor's filing date | Prior rights in an unregistered sign (Art. 6(3)) |
| Internal notes, emails and reports recording when the filing became known | When the owner learned of the use, and what it did next | The acquiescence bar (Art. 25(6)) |
| Register extracts for the distributor and connected companies | Whether the filing is isolated or part of a pattern across names and classes | Bad faith; scope of the relief to be sought |
A point about the last row. Filings of this kind are often not single: the same brand may appear in a director’s personal name, in an affiliate, or across classes the distributor never traded in. That pattern is itself evidence, and it also determines whether a transfer request under Article 10 will actually clear the register or leave a second entry standing behind the first.
First Steps, and the Commercial Overlay
Order the register position before anything else: the filing date, the classes, whether the mark is still an application or already registered, and whether other filings exist in related names. Then fix the date of knowledge internally, in writing, because Article 25(6) will be litigated on that date.
Where the mark is still an application, the two-month opposition window governs everything and there is no time for a staged decision. Where it is registered, the choice between invalidity and transfer under Article 10 should be made with the class coverage in front of you, and interim relief under Article 159 considered — that provision requires proof that the use complained of is taking place in Türkiye, or that serious and effective preparations for it are under way. Damages claims are subject to Article 157, which applies the limitation provisions of the Turkish Code of Obligations No. 6098; under Article 72 of that Code a tort claim is time-barred two years after the injured party learns of the damage and of the person liable, and in any event ten years after the act, with a longer criminal limitation period applying where the act is also an offence carrying one. Where infringement is on the table as well, Article 149(1) sets out the menu of claims — a declaration whether the act constitutes infringement, prevention of threatened infringement, cessation of the infringing acts, removal of the infringement together with compensation for pecuniary and non-pecuniary loss, seizure, and publication of the judgment — and under Article 149(3) the right to publication lapses if it is not requested within three months of the judgment becoming final. These claims fall within the framework described on the trademark litigation page.
Finally, keep the commercial file and the register file in the same room. A registration in the distributor’s name is rarely an isolated act; it usually surfaces alongside a termination, and the distributor’s own claims — in particular the portfolio indemnity discussed in our note on ending a distributorship or agency in Türkiye — will be traded against the mark. If the outcome is a negotiated transfer rather than a judgment, Article 148(4) requires the assignment to be in notarised form for validity, and Article 148(5) means the transfer should be recorded in the register, since unrecorded transactions cannot be asserted against third parties acting in good faith. A settlement that stops short of the notary and the register solves the dispute without solving the problem.
Two neighbouring exposures surface in the same termination often enough to be planned for. Goods still standing in the distributor’s warehouse can be attached for the distributor’s own debts, and the owner’s remedy — with the seven-day clock in İİK Art. 96/3 — is described in a third-party ownership claim over seized goods. And where listings keep appearing after termination, the marketplace notice procedure in reporting counterfeit goods on a Turkish marketplace can clear them quickly, though it addresses the offering rather than the registration behind it.
