New plant varieties are protected in Türkiye under Law No. 5042 on the Protection of Breeders’ Rights for New Plant Varieties, sitting alongside the wider intellectual property and patent litigation regime. 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.
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We advise breeders, seed companies and research institutions on obtaining, maintaining and enforcing plant breeders’ rights before the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, where applications are handled by the General Directorate of Plant Production. Our work spans the full life of a right: pre-filing novelty audits, application and prosecution, denomination clearance (coordinated with trademark registration), commercial licensing agreements, and infringement litigation.
Who can apply
The following may file for protection:
- Turkish citizens;
- natural or legal persons domiciled or having a business centre in Türkiye;
- persons entitled to apply under the UPOV Convention; and
- on the basis of reciprocity, nationals of states that protect Turkish nationals (Article 4 of Law No. 5042).
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An application may be filed by the breeder or by an authorised representative. Under the implementing regulation, an applicant with no domicile in Türkiye must appoint a representative domiciled in Türkiye; filing through a representative requires a notarised power of attorney, and foreign-language documents must be filed with sworn Turkish translations. Where there is more than one breeder, they hold the right as co-owners unless they have agreed otherwise (Article 11), and varieties developed by employees in the course of their work belong to the employer unless the contract or the nature of the work indicates otherwise (Article 12). These points 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 notarised 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 sold or made available to the public beyond the permitted grace periods;
- Distinctness: it is clearly distinguishable from commonly known varieties;
- Uniformity: its relevant characteristics are sufficiently uniform; and
- Stability: those characteristics remain unchanged after repeated propagation (Articles 3 and 5-8).
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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, which is why a pre-filing audit matters.
A variety is treated as new only if the breeder, or someone with the breeder’s consent, has not sold or otherwise made available to the public propagating or harvested material of the variety for exploitation (Article 5/1):
- within Türkiye more than one year before the filing date;
- outside Türkiye more than four years before filing; or
- for trees and vines, more than six years before filing.
| Prior dealing | Grace period before filing |
|---|---|
| Sale of propagating or harvested material within Türkiye | 1 year |
| Sale of propagating or harvested material outside Türkiye | 4 years |
| Trees and vines | 6 years |
| Entry in the official variety catalogue | Does not affect novelty (Article 5/2(e)) |
Certain acts do not defeat novelty. Article 5/2(e) of Law No. 5042 expressly provides that activities arising from obligations such as entering varieties to be traded in the official catalogue do not affect novelty; entering a variety on the variety lists kept under Seed Law No. 5553 (whose Article 4 has the Ministry register varieties under procedures set by plant group) is such an entry, and is not the sale or making available to the public that Article 5/1 treats as destroying novelty. This distinction is important, because listing for seed-certification purposes is often confused with the exclusive breeders’ right.
Selling your variety outside the grace periods destroys novelty, and novelty once lost cannot be recovered. Map every prior sale, trial and cross-border shipment against the grace-period clock before you disclose anything.
Scope, procedure and term
Once granted, the right gives the breeder exclusive control over acts involving propagating material of the protected variety, under Article 14: producing or reproducing, conditioning for propagation, offering for sale, selling or otherwise marketing, exporting or importing, and stocking. The right also reaches harvested material obtained through unauthorised use of propagating material, and products made directly from that harvested material, unless the holder had a reasonable opportunity to exercise the right over the propagating material and did not do so. This “cascade” is what lets breeders act against downstream infringers who never touched certified seed.
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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 under Ministry supervision, by the Ministry’s own units or institutions it designates. Where growing or other tests have been carried out by the competent authority of a UPOV member country with the same agro-climatic conditions as Türkiye, the technical examination may be based on those results (Article 39), 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 a name has been registered and is in use for the variety in Türkiye or a UPOV member country, the application must be made under that name (Article 9). The name cannot be misleading, cannot be identical or confusingly similar to the name of a variety of the same or a closely related species, and cannot contain elements that would bar trademark registration for related goods. Applications are published in the Plant Variety Bulletin within 30 days of entry in the register, and third parties may object to the Ministry within three months of publication (Articles 36 and 37). The final denomination can be opposed within three months of its publication (Article 41), and the registration itself within 30 days of its publication (Article 45).
Protection lasts 25 years from registration, extended to 30 years for trees, vines and potatoes, subject to payment of the annual fees (Articles 10 and 46). Between filing and grant, the applicant enjoys provisional protection: anyone carrying out acts that require the holder’s authorisation must pay the holder equitable remuneration (Article 15), and the claim must be brought within one year of learning of the act (Article 60).
Limits on the right
The exclusive right is not absolute. Key statutory exceptions include:
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- Private, non-commercial and experimental use, and acts done for the purpose of breeding other varieties, except for the varieties covered by Article 14(5): essentially derived varieties, varieties not clearly distinguishable from the protected variety, and varieties whose production requires repeated use of the protected variety (Article 16; the “breeder’s exemption”);
- The farmer’s exemption (Article 17), allowing farmers to use the product of their own harvest of the listed species as propagating material on land they farm themselves, excluding hybrid and synthetic varieties; small farmers pay nothing, other farmers pay a remuneration agreed with the holder;
- Exhaustion (Article 31): the right is exhausted for material sold or otherwise marketed in Türkiye by the breeder or with consent, except for further propagation, or for export of propagable material to a country that does not protect the genus or species, unless the exported material is for final consumption; and
- Compulsory licences on public-interest grounds, available from the end of the third year after registration and decided by the President (Article 18).
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 claimed in writing, and the Ministry may, within three months of the filing date, ask for certified copies and translations of the first-filing documents and samples or evidence that the varieties are the same (Article 34). Used properly, priority protects you against your own necessary commercialisation abroad and against a competitor’s intervening disclosure. A priority right not used in time lapses.
Licensing, assignment and enforcement
A registered breeders’ right is a commercial asset. It can be assigned, inherited, pledged or attached, and licensed on an exclusive or non-exclusive basis (Articles 49 and 50). Transactions must be in writing; transfers are entered in the register and published, and a licence is registered and published in the Bulletin at either party’s written request. Unless the contract says otherwise, an exclusive licensee may sue infringers in its own name; a non-exclusive licensee may sue only if the holder, after notarised notice, refuses or fails to sue within three months. Sound licence drafting (royalty structure, territory, quality control and audit rights) is what converts a certificate into a dependable revenue stream.
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Where a protected right is infringed, the breeder can ask the court to:
- stop the infringement and remove its effects;
- seize the infringing material and the means used directly to produce it, and order measures such as altering or destroying them;
- award pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages, including lost profits; and
- order publication of the judgment at the infringer’s expense (Article 57).
Infringement may also carry criminal liability. Under Article 66, using the holder’s exclusive powers without consent, dealing in material that the person knew or should have known was produced in breach of the right, and usurping the right are punishable by imprisonment of one to two years or a judicial fine of up to 1,000 days; prosecution of these offences requires a complaint. On the civil side, Article 59 lets the holder choose one of three methods for calculating lost profit: the income it could probably have earned without the infringer’s competition, the profit the infringer made, or the licence fee the infringer would have paid. Cases are heard by the intellectual property courts designated under Article 68. Because much of the evidence (propagation volumes, sales channels, seed provenance) sits with the infringer, early evidence preservation through a determination action and an interim injunction, which can include seizure of material in customs areas and free zones (Articles 62 and 63), and a court-appointed examiner’s report often decide the case.
Practical takeaways
Plant breeders’ rights reward genuine innovation in agriculture, and Turkish law and practice are aligned with UPOV standards. Two points that 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.
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