Industrial designs are effective tools for protecting and enforcing rights arising from visual creations in Turkey. But this fact has generally been overlooked, particularly by foreign right owners interested in the Turkish market.
Over the past five years, design applications before the Turkish Patent Institute have increased 35%, reaching 6,578 (including 29,954 individual designs) in 2008. Foreign applications represent only 18% of this total, with Japan and Germany leading the foreign-filing nations.
According to the official statistics, the top companies taking advantage of the Turkish design protection system are Unilever, Honda Motor, Bridgestone, BSH Bosch & Siemens, Calor, Colgate-Palmolive and Lidl Stiftung, followed by Philips, Scania, Braun, Electrolux and Rowenta.
A very wide range of designs can be protected by a registered design, including type faces, as well as the lines, colours, texture, shape, sound, elasticity, material and other characteristics of products, which are perceived by the human senses as constituting the appearance of the whole or part of a product or its ornamentation. In this context, a product means any industrial or handicraft item, parts of a complex system, sets, compositions of items, packaging, get-up, graphic symbols and typefaces, with the exception of computer programs and semiconductor products.
In addition, designs capable of protection can include logos, stylised words, labels and the appearance of packaging as a useful supplement or alternative to trade mark protection where the latter may be difficult to obtain or cannot be secured without extensive use (that is, use within five years of the registration date).
Similar to all modern design laws, "novel" designs of "distinctive/individual character" can be protected for a maximum duration of 25 years, with four renewals at five-year intervals. The priority term is six months from the priority date. Multiple applications with the same class can be included in one design application. Unlike patents and trade marks, there is no requirement to work/use the registered designs in Turkey.
Novelty is to be assessed on a worldwide basis, but is not destroyed where disclosure of the design has been made by the rights owner within 12 months of the application or the priority date, if any. In general, a design is regarded as having "individual character" if it produces a different overall impression on an informed user to that produced by any previous design.
No novelty examination is carried on industrial design applications, only formal examination. All design applications are published in the Turkish Design Bulletin so that third parties concerned may oppose the registration of the design. The time for registering a design application is about 10 to 12 months unless an opposition is filed during the publication period of six months. If desired, however, publication of the design may be delayed to 30 months from the filing date.
Design Decree-Law 554 entered into force on June 27 1995 and new draft law is ready and is waiting the approval of the Turkish Senate. Turkey is a party of the Paris Convention on the protection of industrial property, the Locarno Agreement establishing an international classification for industrial designs and the Hague Agreement for the international registration of industrial designs (Geneva text).
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Ersin Dereligil |
Destek Patent Inc
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Turkey
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