Insights
Key Developments and Predictions for Trademark Law in Turkey - 2020
Trademark law has continued to evolve at a slow pace within the course of the last year, while January, 2020, marks the completion of the third year of Industry Property Code No. 6769 (“the IP Code”). The Turkish Patent and Trademark Office (“TÜRKPATENT” or “the Office”) issued guidelines in an aim to bring clarity on absolute grounds examination, and a new guideline is to be announced within the first half of 2020. The decisions of TÜRKPATENT in opposition and appeal phases… »
Judicial Remedy Against Decisions Issued by Turkish Data Protection Board
Under the Personal Data Protection Law No. 6698 Article 18 ("DPL") the Personal Data Protection Board (“Board”) has the authority to impose administrative fines on data controllers due to failure to comply with their various obligations regulated under the DPL, i.e. failure to comply with the obligation to inform data subjects, obligations related to data security, the decisions issued by the Board and registration and notification obligations to the Data Controllers’… »
Is Digital Service Tax Dead Already? Legal Barriers in the Way of Collecting Digital Service Tax in 2020
New taxes entered into our lives with the Act numbered 7194 which was published in the Official Gazette on 7 December 2019. One of these taxes is Digital Service Tax. The law provides that digital service providers are liable for this tax at a ratio of 7,5% over the revenue they generate from their digital services. The examples of such digital services include games, software, applications, music, video, online advertisement and online market place services. If tax payers… »
Innovator Companies Seek to Protect Themselves Against Generic Companies
In order to contribute to human health, innovative pharmaceutical companies carry out studies that take many years and require huge amounts of investment and research, and as a result, they obtain patent protection for their inventions for a limited period of time. It is very important that the patent rights, which are limited only for a certain period of time, can be used and protected effectively. Applying for abridged marketing authorisation (MA) by referencing the… »
Implementation of Mandatory Mediation in IP Disputes: Court of Cassation Issues Contradictory Decisions
Background An implementation problem occurs when monetary and non-monetary claims are raised together in IP cases, since the code introducing mandatory mediation does not provide a specic rule for disputes combining both monetary and non-monetary claims in a single case. In such scenario, one of the following three options must be applied by the courts: passing through mandatory mediation and entering into the merits of the case for all claims; dismissing all claims based… »
Industrial Design Rights 2020: Turkey
Industrial Design Rights is a revised and updated third edition of a significant work first published in 2001 under the auspices of the Intellectual Property Committee of the International Bar Association. There have been considerable changes since the previous edition principally in the increasing adoption of the Hague Convention on designs all over the world and harmonization of industrial designs among the European Community countries. Industrial designs are particularly… »
How Do Insurance Contracts Respond to COVID-19 Outbreak?
1. General Overlook Measures and restrictions being gradually introduced by the government against the COVID-19 outbreak, which was announced as a pandemic by the World Health Organization and diagnosed for the first time in Turkey on 11 March 2020, aim to protect public health while sustaining employment, production and supply chains. Restrictions, which were first imposed on flights to China in February, were introduced for flights to another 71 countries in March.[1] These… »
Guidelines on Named Patient Programme Amended
The Amended Guidelines on Named Patient Program (“Guidelines”) has been published by the Turkish Medicines and Medical Devices Agency (“Agency”) on September 25, 2020. The Guidelines explains the procedure on the supply from abroad of drugs that are not authorized in Turkey and/or not available on the Turkish market due to various reasons. This Guidelines was first published in 2014, amended in 2015 and 2017, and finally published in its most current version on September 25… »
Guidelines on Non-Clinical Evaluation of Vaccines
On 6 October 2020, the Turkish Medicines and Medical Devices Agency published Guidelines on Non-Clinical Evaluation of Human Vaccines (Turkish language) to provide guidance on vaccine development procedures. The guidelines regulate non-clinical evaluations and obtaining appropriate results from them, which are prerequisites for initiating clinical trials on a vaccine candidate. Non-clinical evaluation refers to all in vivo and in vitro tests performed before and during the… »
FICPI Turkish Section under the Spotlight
The initiative for the foundation of the FICPI Turkish section was started in 2012 by a handful of Turkish practitioners, who were individual members of FICPI. The aim of founding the National Section was to be more active within FICPI as Turkish members and to help shape the IP system in our country by keeping abreast of the developments in the world. With the support of President of FICPI at that time, Mr Bastiaan Koester, the FICPI Bureau and the FICPI officers, various… »
Does the Use of a Trademark on a Book Cover Qualify As Infringement?
In a recently published decision (No 2020/406 E, 2020/4212 K, 19 October 2020), the Court of Cassation(11 Chamber) has considered that the use of a trademark on a book cover was a legitimate use.BackgroundThe case was originally led before the Bakırköy Second IP Court. The complainants - Dünya Süper Veb Ofset Anonim Şirketi, the owner of the Dünya newspaper, and Mr Nezih Demirkent, the newspaper’s founder - alleged that the defendants infringed the trademark depicted below… »
Employing a Trademark as a Domain Name Alone is Not Sufficient to Prove Genuine Use
The first instance Civil Court for Intellectual and Industrial Rights (“IP court”) in its decision rendered in October, 2020, pointed out that the use of the subject mark solely as a domain name is not deemed sufficient to prove the use of the mark as a trademark. The decision concerns a revocation action for non-use filed against a trademark that has been registered for more than five years, but which has not been used properly and effectively with respect to the relevant… »