Injection of Capital Advance as a Recovery Method For Technical Bankruptcy Under The Turkish Commercial Code
According to the company statistics published by the Turkish Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges (TOBB), a total of 63,709 companies were incorporated in Turkey provided that 4,523 of these companies were incorporated with foreign capital only in 2016. However, due to certain reasons such as incorporation of the companies with the minimum capital required by the law, many companies may fall in the technical bankruptcy situation soon after their establishment. Although… »
Draft Law on Labour Courts and Proposed Mandatory Mediation Phase
Introduction The Ministry of Justice recently prepared a new draft Law on Labour Courts and shared it with the relevant public institutions and organisations for review. The principle of employment cases is to conduct litigation in a timely manner. However, in practice, the labour courts’ heavy workload obstructs this principle and employment cases take a considerable amount of time. The draft law aims to ease the judiciary’s workload in this regard and accelerate the… »
Turkey Protects 3D Marks, Colours and Sounds
Turkey began this year with a new law regulating and effecting almost all intellectual property rights, unifying them into a single code. This Industrial Property Code number 6967 (“the IP Code”) came into force on 10 January 2017. The IP Code replaces the Decree Laws which regulated the protection of trademarks, patents, geographical indications and industrial designs. Turkey has a long tradition of protecting intellectual property rights and is signatory to almost all the… »
Turkey’s Long Road to Becoming an Oil and Gas Hub
Turkey is not a large producer of oil and natural gas resources. Its oil and gas production is minimal when compared to its hydrocarbon-rich neighbours such as Azerbaijan, Russia, Iraq, and Iran. Yet, it still has a specific advantage: it is located between these oil-rich countries and the highly industrialised and developed western economies, which are large oil and natural gas consumers. Currently, crude oil and natural gas are carried via land pipelines to Turkey from… »
Direct Applicability of European Patent Convention While Invalidation Actions Pending
Turkey became a signatory to the European Patent Convention (EPC) on November 1 2000. The enactment of the Law on Joining the European Patent Convention on the Grant of European Patents and Its Protocols (4054) brought the EPC provisions into force in Turkey. Accordingly, the EPC is directly applicable to European patents validated in Turkey. However, few of the EPC provisions bind the national courts. For example, Article 138/3 gives a European patent owner the right to… »
Banking Law Amendment Provides Relief to Bank Officers and Company Executives
Introduction On February 9 2017 Decree-Law 687 was enacted by the Council of Ministers (based on its powers under the state of emergency). Among other things, the decree-law amends Banking Law 5411 by introducing a sub-paragraph into Article 160, which regulates the crime of embezzlement committed by bank officers. The new provision (Article 160/4) stipulates: “Loan allocation or extension; allocation of additional loans; instalment, securing or restructuring of loans which… »
Patent and Utility Model Prosecution Under the New Industrial Property Law
The Industrial Property Law came in force on January 10 2017. It introduces new provisions to encourage filing national applications before the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office (TPTO) by setting out a standardised procedure which can be completed in a shorter time. The new law reduces the number of requirements for filing an application to make it easier to obtain a filing date. Under the new regime, a request for a patent or utility model which includes the applicant’s… »
Life Sciences Newsletter, February 2017
No educational material for patients shall be distributed Dicle Doğan and Nehir Aydeniz, Gün + Partners The “Regulation on Promotional Activities for Medicinal Products for Human Use” prohibits promotional activities that address the general public (Article 5). The Turkish Medicines and Medical Devices Agency has extended this provision to cover certain educational materials provided by the pharmaceutical industry to patients, which have been deemed to be a form of… »
Turkey: Is new IP Code in line with EPC?
The new Industrial Property Code entered into force in January 2017 and repealed Decree Law No 551 on Patents and other decree laws pertaining to IP rights. The new Industrial Property Code only brings a few changes to the Decree Law previously in effect. One of the changes brought by the new Code is that, similar to the European Patent Convention to which Turkey is a party, a post-grant opposition system has been introduced. Accordingly third parties may oppose against the… »
Welcome Reforms to Trade Mark Protection
Turkey’s long-awaited Industrial Property Code number 6769 has entered into force upon publication in the Official Gazette on January 10 2017. The IP Code is mostly welcome as the Turkish IP regime has needed reform for a long time. Except for copyright, the main IP rights, namely patents, geographical Indications, industrial designs and trade marks were all regulated in the form of decree-laws which entered into force 20 years ago. The legal texts were mostly compatible with… »
Patent Provisions of Turkey’s New IP Law
The long-awaited Industrial Property Law numbered 6769 finally came into force in Turkey on January 10 2017. The new law regulates all IP rights in a single code. It consists of 193 articles and six provisional articles divided into five chapters. The first four books of the law regulate trade marks, geographical indications, designs and patent rights respectively. The name of the Turkish Patent Institute has changed to the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office (TPTO) with… »
Amendments to the Advertisement Regulation
Turkish Regulation on Commercial Advertisement and Unfair Commercial Practices (“Regulation”) which is the main regulation regarding advertising has been amended with an amending regulation published in the Official Gazette dated 4 January 2017 and numbered 29938 (“Amending Regulation”). The Amending Regulation, first of all, postpones the enforcement date for the rule allowing the use of name or trademark of the competitor in the comparative advertisement. This rule has been… »