A final Turkish judgment has held that a trademark owner cannot be charged for the storage of counterfeit goods after those goods have been seized in criminal proceedings.
Background
The case concerned 264,740 units of counterfeit Colgate toothpaste, weighing approximately 27.7 tonnes.
Following the temporary detention of the goods at customs, a criminal complaint was filed on behalf of Colgate-Palmolive Company. The Criminal Court ordered their seizure, and the destruction…
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Trade mark squatting has unfortunately become increasingly common in Türkiye in recent years. Bad-faith applicants often identify trade marks that are registered and genuinely used abroad but have not yet been registered in Türkiye, file applications for those marks in their own names and then attempt to sell the registrations or present themselves as the rightful proprietors of the trade marks. In another common scenario, bad-faith applicants use the registrations they have…
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The Bolar exemption was originally conceived as a limited mechanism enabling generic and biosimilar manufacturers to complete the regulatory steps necessary to enter the market immediately after patent expiry. The EU Pharma Package now seeks to broaden the exemption substantially, both in terms of the activities covered and the parties entitled to rely on it. This development invites a re-examination of Turkiye’s long-standing – and already notably broad – interpretation of…
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With its decision published in the Official Gazette on 17 March 2026, the Constitutional Court brought renewed attention to a significant issue that had long been overlooked in relation to limited liability companies. The Constitutional Court held that requiring a general assembly majority for the exclusion of a shareholder in two-shareholder limited liability companies creates a practical deadlock. Accordingly, the Court annulled, in respect of two-shareholder limited…
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Introduction
Intellectual property law provides for various protection mechanisms aimed at safeguarding creative works; such that, depending on the nature of the product or creative works, it is possible to apply for more than one means of protection simultaneously. In this context, designs that meet the necessary criteria may be protected by both design rights under the Industrial Property Code No. 6769 (“IP Code”) and as work under the Law on Intellectual and Artistic Works…
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The acceleration of digitalization, the widespread adoption of internet-based uses, and the increasing interaction between artificial intelligence (“AI”) systems and copyright-protected content necessitate greater legal certainty regarding the position of rights holders and the development of mechanisms enabling them to effectively exercise their rights. To address this need, the The Proposal Amending the Law No. 5846 on Intellectual and Artistic Works ("Proposal") was…
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