Intellectual Property Law in Türkiye

Intellectual property is often a company’s most valuable — and most exposed — asset. Türkiye’s modern Industrial Property Law No. 6769, in force since January 2017, brought trademark, patent, design and geographical-indication rules into a single, EU-aligned framework. Geographical indications are now governed directly by this law. Disputes are heard by dedicated specialised civil and criminal IP courts in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir, whose judges deal with these questions daily — a real advantage over general courts.

For a foreign business, the practical message is simple: Turkish IP rights are territorial. A trademark registered in London, New York or Frankfurt gives you nothing in Türkiye. To be protected here, you must secure rights here — and the earlier you do it, the cheaper and safer the whole exercise becomes.

The four pillars of protection

Turkish law protects four principal categories of industrial and creative rights, each with its own registry, term and strategy.

• Trademarks — words, logos, shapes, colours and even sounds that distinguish your goods or services. Registered before TÜRKPATENT for ten years, renewable indefinitely.
• Patents and utility models — technical inventions. Patents run up to twenty years and require novelty and inventive step; utility models offer a faster, lighter route for smaller innovations for up to ten years.
• Designs — the appearance of a product: its lines, contours, shape and ornamentation. A registered design is protected for up to twenty-five years.
• Copyright — literary, artistic, musical and software works, governed by the Law on Intellectual and Artistic Works No. 5846. Copyright arises automatically on creation, with no registration requirement, and lasts for the author’s life plus seventy years.

Right	Registration	Maximum term
Trademark	TÜRKPATENT	10 years, renewable indefinitely
Patent	TÜRKPATENT	20 years
Utility model	TÜRKPATENT	10 years
Design	TÜRKPATENT	25 years (5-year renewal terms)
Copyright	None — automatic on creation	Life of the author + 70 years

Why acting early is everything

Because Türkiye is first-to-file, the party that registers first generally prevails — even against the true originator of a brand. Foreign companies entering the Turkish market routinely discover that a distributor, former partner or opportunistic third party has already registered “their” mark and is now demanding a buy-out, blocking imports, or trading on their reputation.

If you plan to sell, license or manufacture in Türkiye, file your trademark before you announce your arrival — not after. The single most expensive words in Turkish IP are “we’ll register it once we launch.”

Recovering a hijacked mark is possible through bad-faith cancellation and well-known-mark claims, but it means litigation: years of proceedings, expert reports and legal fees that dwarf the cost of a timely filing. Prevention here is not a cliché; it is a budget line that saves you a fortune.

Timing matters within the process too. Once your application is published in the Official Trademark Bulletin, third parties have two months to oppose — and once a competitor’s mark is published, you have the same two months to oppose theirs. Watching the Bulletin is therefore not optional housekeeping: an opposition filed on time costs a fraction of a cancellation action filed after registration.

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What we do

We act as a single point of contact for the entire life cycle of an IP right, so you are not stitching together clearance searches, filings, renewals and disputes across different advisers.

Clearance and filing

Before you commit to a name or design, we run availability and freedom-to-operate searches on the TÜRKPATENT registers to flag conflicts early. We then prepare and prosecute trademark, patent, utility-model and design applications, respond to office actions and refusals, and manage the two-month opposition window that follows publication in the Official Trademark Bulletin.

Portfolio management

For clients with more than a handful of rights, we maintain the portfolio as a living asset: docketing renewal deadlines, recording assignments, mergers and name changes, structuring licences, and coordinating filings in Türkiye alongside your international (Madrid Protocol) strategy so nothing lapses through a missed date.

Enforcement and anti-counterfeiting

When rights are threatened, we move quickly — cease-and-desist letters, infringement and cancellation actions, preliminary injunctions, customs recordals and criminal complaints for counterfeiting. Türkiye’s IP courts can order seizure of infringing goods and blocking of infringing content, and criminal counterfeiting carries real penalties.

One practical note on customs: a recordal only works if officers can recognise the fake. The most effective recordals come with product identification guides — photos, security features, authorised importer lists — that let a customs officer at the border distinguish genuine goods from counterfeits in seconds. We prepare and update these guides as part of the recordal, so detentions actually happen instead of remaining a right on paper.

A registered right you never enforce trains infringers to ignore you. Consistent, visible enforcement is what actually protects a brand’s value over time.

Transactions and due diligence

IP frequently sits at the centre of deals. We conduct IP due diligence for acquisitions and investments, confirm chain of title, and draft licensing, franchising and technology-transfer agreements that are enforceable under Turkish law and clear about ownership of anything created during the relationship.

What this means for you

If you are entering the Turkish market, treat IP as a launch task, not an afterthought. In practical terms:

1. Search first. A quick clearance search can spare you a rebrand and an opposition.
2. File before you launch. Registration is the cheapest insurance you will ever buy against a hijacked mark.
3. Record with customs. A customs recordal turns the border into your first line of defence against counterfeits.
4. Diarise your renewals. Rights lapse silently; a single missed deadline can undo years of goodwill.
5. Enforce consistently. Deal with infringements early, while they are small and cheap to stop.

Whether you are protecting a single trademark or building a cross-border portfolio, we bring the same rigour and the same clarity — in English and Turkish — so that decisions taken in your headquarters translate cleanly into protected rights on the ground in Türkiye.