Plant Breeders' Rights in Türkiye

New plant varieties are protected in Türkiye under Law No. 5042 on the Protection of Breeders’ Rights for New Plant Varieties. The law lets breeders secure an exclusive, time-limited right over varieties they have developed. As a member of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV), Türkiye grants and enforces these rights in line with international standards, which matters for breeders coordinating filings across several countries. Crucially, the right is created by registration, not by the act of breeding — the innovation may be entirely yours, but until the variety is registered you have no exclusive right to stop others from propagating and selling it.

We advise breeders, seed companies and research institutions on obtaining, maintaining and enforcing plant breeders’ rights before the competent Turkish authorities, including the Variety Registration and Seed Certification Centre (TTSM) and the General Directorate of Plant Production. Our work spans the full life of a right: pre-filing novelty audits, application and prosecution, denomination clearance, licensing and assignment, and infringement litigation.

Who can apply

The following may file for protection:

• Turkish citizens and legal entities established in Türkiye;
• Nationals of UPOV member states;
• Foreign nationals resident in Türkiye; and
• Applicants benefiting from reciprocity.

An application may be filed by the breeder or by an authorised representative. An applicant with no domicile, seat or establishment in Türkiye must appoint a local representative through a power of attorney, legalised by Apostille or, where the applicant’s country is not party to the Apostille Convention, by a Turkish consulate. Where more than one person contributed to the breeding, the right belongs to them jointly unless they have agreed otherwise — a point that should be settled in writing early, especially in research collaborations and university spin-outs, to avoid entitlement disputes later.

What this means for you

If you are a foreign breeder, the practical first step is not the application form but the paperwork chain: identifying the correct applicant entity, confirming who legally owns the breeding work, and getting a legalised power of attorney in place. These items routinely take longer than expected, and they sit on the critical path to a valid filing date.

Conditions for protection

To be registrable, a variety must satisfy four requirements:

• Novelty — it has not been commercially exploited beyond the permitted grace periods;
• Distinctness — it is clearly distinguishable from known varieties;
• Uniformity — its relevant characteristics are sufficiently uniform; and
• Stability — those characteristics remain unchanged after repeated propagation.

The last three — distinctness, uniformity and stability — form the internationally recognised DUS test and are assessed through technical growing trials rather than paperwork. Novelty, by contrast, is a legal question decided on the facts of prior dealings, and it is where most refusals happen.

A variety is treated as new only if the breeder, or someone with the breeder’s consent, has not sold or otherwise disposed of propagating material:

• within Türkiye more than one year before the filing date; or
• outside Türkiye more than four years before filing — six years for trees and vines.

Prior dealing	Grace period before filing
Sale of propagating material within Türkiye	1 year
Sale of propagating material outside Türkiye	4 years
Sale abroad — trees and vines	6 years
Entry on the national variety list	Does not destroy novelty

Certain acts do not defeat novelty. Notably, Turkish courts have held that entering a variety on the national variety list is not a commercial sale and does not, on its own, destroy novelty. This distinction is important, because listing for seed-certification purposes is often confused with the exclusive breeders’ right.

Selling your variety before you file is the single most common way to lose the right forever. Map every prior sale, trial and cross-border shipment against the grace-period clock before you disclose anything — novelty, once lost, cannot be recovered.

Scope, procedure and term

Once granted, the right gives the breeder exclusive control over acts involving propagating material of the protected variety, including production, propagation, offering for sale, selling, marketing, exporting, importing and stocking. In defined circumstances the right can also reach harvested material — and even products made directly from it — where the breeder had no reasonable opportunity to exercise the right at the propagating-material stage. This “cascade” is what lets breeders act against downstream infringers who never touched certified seed.

The application passes through three stages:

• Formal examination — confirming that the required documents and information are complete;
• Substantive examination — assessing novelty, the applicant’s entitlement and the proposed denomination; and
• Technical examination — testing distinctness, uniformity and stability, usually by the TTSM. Where growing conditions are comparable, results from tests carried out by authorised offices in other UPOV countries may be accepted, which can save a full growing season.

Because the technical examination depends on actual growing cycles, timing the application against the sowing calendar matters: filing just after the relevant season closes can push the DUS trials — and therefore grant — back by a year. Where the variety is already protected abroad, asking early whether existing foreign DUS reports can be taken over is one of the simplest ways to shorten the Turkish procedure.

The breeder chooses the variety’s denomination. If the variety is already registered in a UPOV country, the same name must be used in Türkiye. The name cannot be misleading, cannot conflict with an earlier variety denomination in the same or a closely related species, and cannot simply duplicate a trademark in a way that causes confusion. Accepted applications are published in the official bulletin, and third parties may file objections within three months of publication.

Protection lasts 25 years from registration, extended to 30 years for trees, vines and potatoes, subject to payment of the annual fees. Between filing and grant, the applicant enjoys provisional protection, so acts that would infringe a granted right can give rise to a claim for reasonable compensation once the right issues.

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Limits on the right

The exclusive right is not absolute. Key statutory exceptions include:

• Private, non-commercial and experimental use, and acts done for the purpose of breeding further new varieties (the “breeder’s exemption”);
• The farmer’s privilege, allowing farmers to save and re-sow part of their own harvest of certain crops on their own holding, within limits and without a right to trade the saved seed; and
• Exhaustion, meaning the right does not extend to material the breeder has already placed on the market, unless it is used for further propagation.

These limits shape enforcement strategy. A demand letter that ignores the farmer’s privilege or the breeder’s exemption invites a well-founded defence, so the scope of permitted use should be checked before any action is threatened.

Right of priority

An applicant who has already filed in a UPOV member country may claim priority in Türkiye within 12 months of that first filing. When priority is claimed and accepted, the earlier foreign filing date is treated as the Turkish filing date. Priority must be requested expressly, and the office may ask for legalised copies, translations and evidence that the varieties match. Used properly, priority protects you against your own necessary commercialisation abroad and against a competitor’s intervening disclosure — but the 12-month window is unforgiving, and missing it can be fatal to novelty.

Licensing, assignment and enforcement

A registered breeders’ right is a commercial asset. It can be assigned, mortgaged, or licensed on an exclusive or non-exclusive basis, and it can be enforced against infringers. To be effective against third parties, transfers and licences should be entered in the register. Sound licence drafting — royalty structure, territory, quality control and audit rights — is what converts a certificate into a dependable revenue stream.

Where a protected right is infringed, the breeder can ask the court to:

• stop the infringement and seize infringing production;
• claim compensation for pecuniary and non-pecuniary damage, including lost profits.

Infringement may also carry criminal liability. Infringement litigation under Law No. 5042 has been rising, and Turkish courts have shown a willingness to award non-pecuniary damages even where pecuniary loss is difficult to prove. Because much of the evidence — propagation volumes, sales channels, seed provenance — sits with the infringer, early evidence-preservation measures and expert examination often decide the case.

Practical takeaways

Plant breeders’ rights reward genuine innovation in agriculture, and Turkish law and practice are aligned with UPOV standards and EU directives. The two points that most often catch breeders out are the novelty grace periods and the mistaken belief that entry on the national seed list gives the same protection as a registered breeders’ right. Getting the filing strategy right at the outset — timing, priority claims and denomination — is what secures the right and makes it enforceable. Just as important is treating the right as a managed asset afterwards: paying annual fees on time, recording licences, and preserving evidence before enforcement.

This page is a general overview and is not legal advice. For guidance on a specific variety or dispute, please contact us.