Industrial Design Protection and Design Litigation

We advise designers, manufacturers, importers and brand owners across that framework: clearing and filing designs, opposing and defending registrations before TÜRKPATENT, and enforcing design rights alongside the wider industrial property portfolio.

Two limits are worth reading early. Article 58/4 excludes appearance features dictated by the product’s technical function and shapes that must be produced in particular dimensions so the product can be mechanically connected to another, although Article 58/5 preserves designs allowing modular units to be connected in various configurations. Article 58/3 confirms that design protection does not prejudice copyright protection under Law No. 5846, so an original pattern can rest on both footings at once.

Novelty is absolute and worldwide: the design is new if no identical design was made available to the public anywhere before that date, and Article 56/4 adds that designs differing only in minor details are treated as identical.

Individual character asks whether the overall impression the design produces on the informed user differs from that of any earlier disclosed design, and Article 56/6 requires the degree of freedom the designer had to be taken into account. The statutory test is the overall impression, not the details: Article 56/5 frames the comparison around the overall impression on the informed user, and for novelty Article 56/4 treats designs that differ only in minor details as identical. Where the designer’s freedom was wide, whether differences that remain matters of detail change the overall impression is assessed by the court on the facts. The assessment reaches the court through a court-appointed expert (bilirkişi) panel, so the technical file put in front of that panel is what decides the case.

Article 57/2 provides a twelve-month grace period: disclosure within the twelve months before the filing or priority date by the designer, a successor, a third party with their consent, or through abuse of the relationship with them, does not count against novelty or individual character. Disclosure under an obligation of confidence is not public disclosure at all (Article 57/1).

TÜRKPATENT’s examination is deliberately light. Under Article 64/6 it refuses an application that does not meet the definition, offends public order or morality, comes from a person outside Article 3, misuses State emblems, or is found not to be new. Individual character is not examined of the Office’s own motion, which makes the opposition window in Article 67/2 the real filter.

Opposition grounds under Article 67/2 go well beyond novelty: failure to meet the Article 55 definition or the Article 56 and 57 conditions, the Article 58/4 exclusions, bad faith in the application, and the unauthorised use of an intellectual property right. If an opposition succeeds, the registration is invalidated at the Office stage (Article 68/5). The mechanics resemble the trade mark opposition procedure, and where one product carries several rights the two files are usually run in step. TÜRKPATENT’s administrative revocation power under Article 26 concerns trade marks only; Law No. 6769 has no equivalent for designs, whose invalidity outside the opposition stage is decided by the court under Article 77. The trade mark side is covered in our note on the 2025 administrative revocation regime.

Deferment under Article 66 is the tool for an unannounced launch, and it carries a trap. Article 66/5 permits an infringement action during the deferment period only if the register entry and file information have been notified to the defendant, and Article 66/4 requires the publication fee to be paid before publication and, where only a specimen of the product was filed, publishable representations to be filed as well; if these conditions are not met in time, the protection is deemed never to have arisen. A third limit is easy to miss: under Article 59/6 the deferred registration is enforced on the terms of Article 59/2 until the representations appear in the Bulletin; that is, for the length of the deferral it reaches only copying, exactly like an unregistered design.

Where an unregistered right is thin or has expired, the fallback is unfair competition under the Turkish Commercial Code No. 6102: Article 55/1-(a)-4 catches measures causing confusion with another’s goods or business, and Article 55/1-(c)-3 catches taking over another’s ready-to-market work product by technical reproduction without any appropriate contribution of one’s own.

Remedies come from the general enforcement provisions: declaration, prevention, cessation, removal with material and moral damages, seizure, transfer of ownership of seized items, destruction where unavoidable, and publication of the judgment (Article 149). Lost profit is calculated at the right holder’s election under Article 151/2, with an equitable share added under Article 151/4 where the first or second method was chosen and the design was the determining factor in demand. Article 150/3 also allows the holder to ask the court to order the infringer to produce the documents relating to use of the right, before filing for damages to secure evidence, or in a pending damages action to quantify the loss.

Jurisdiction sits with the intellectual and industrial property civil courts established where the Ministry of Justice considers it necessary; elsewhere a designated civil court of first instance hears the case (Article 156/1). Actions against TÜRKPATENT decisions go exclusively to the Ankara intellectual and industrial property civil court (Article 156/2). Suing a third party, a right holder may choose the court of its own domicile, of the place of the act, or of the place where the effects are felt (Article 156/3); a claimant with no domicile in Türkiye sues where its registered agent’s place of business is (Article 156/4). Article 157 sends limitation to the Turkish Code of Obligations No. 6098; for a damages claim, Article 72 of that Code sets two years from knowledge of the damage and the person liable, and ten years from the act in any event.

Border enforcement runs through Article 57 of Customs Law No. 4458 rather than Law No. 6769, and is handled together with anti-counterfeiting and customs work. The deadline is short: once customs notifies a detention, an interim injunction must be produced within ten working days, or three for perishable goods. Taking a copy off an online sales channel is a separate route, covered in our note on reporting counterfeit goods on a Turkish marketplace.

Law No. 6769 creates no criminal offence for design infringement. Article 30 of Law No. 6769 creates offences for trade mark infringement only, which is a structural difference from trade mark enforcement and one reason design strategy leans on interim relief and customs rather than on a criminal complaint.

The defences that change outcomes are narrower than defendants assume:

• Prior use (Article 60). A person who, before the filing date, was using in good faith for commercial purposes within the country a design falling within the registered design’s scope but created independently of it, or who had taken serious and genuine steps to do so, may continue to the extent of the reasonable needs of the business. Article 60/2 makes that right non-transferable and non-licensable except with the business itself.
• The repair clause (Article 59/4). Using a component on which a complex product’s appearance depends, to restore the original appearance and without misleading as to origin, is not infringement three years after the design was first put on the market; Article 59/5 lets equivalent parts published by the Ministry be used within that three-year period.
• Exhaustion (Article 152/1) and personal use (Article 153/1). Acts concerning products put on the market by the holder or with its consent fall outside the right, and no civil action lies against someone holding or using infringing goods to the extent of personal needs.
• A later registration is no defence (Article 155). A design owner cannot rely on its own registration against a claimant with an earlier priority or filing date, a point that surprises defendants who assume their certificate immunises them.

A party facing uncertainty can move first: Article 154/1 allows anyone with an interest to ask the right holder for its position and, if no answer arrives within a month or the answer is not accepted, to bring a declaration of non-infringement, but not once an infringement action has already been brought against them.

Employee designs follow Article 73; commissioned work does not, because Article 73/4 leaves ownership under contracts for work outside an employment relationship to the contract itself. Where a design was filed by someone who is not the true owner, Article 71 allows the real holder to demand transfer or recognition within three years of publication or first disclosure, unless the applicant acted in bad faith, in which case no time bar applies.

Article 75/2 sets the licensing default: a licence is non-exclusive unless the contract says otherwise, and an exclusive licensor may not license anyone else and may not use the design itself unless it expressly reserved that right. Article 158/1 gives an exclusive licensee standing to sue in its own name; a non-exclusive licensee must first call on the holder and may sue only if the holder refuses or does not act within three months.