Aim of the Bill
With the Industrial Property Law Bill[1] (“Bill”) presented to the Turkish Grand National Assembly on April 6th, 2016, it is intended to protect the rights with regard to trademarks, geographical indications, designs, patents, utility model and traditional product names. As specified in the preamble of the Bill (“Preamble”), in parallel with Turkey's economic development, there has been significant progress in the field of industrial property rights, the applications of patents, designs and trademarks, in particular, have significantly increased. In line with the improvements in the industrial property field, and for the purpose of ensuring compliance with European Union regulations and international agreements, the Bill was drafted and, in this regard, it is expected to bring solutions to the problems encountered in practice, and to contribute to the realization of technologic, economic and social progress.
The Bill combines all separate and ununiformed regulations of trademarks, patents, industrial designs and protection of geographical indications under a single roof. As well, as specified in the Preamble, in the previous two years, the Constitutional Court has decided upon the repeal of certain provisions of Decree-Laws No. 551 and 556 due to the fact that they are contrary to Article 91/1 of the Constitution with the following justification: “Intellectual and industrial property rights that are under the scope of intangible goods are one of the property rights regulated under Article 35 of the second part of the Constitution, entitled ‘Rights and Duties of an Individual,’ and since the first paragraph of Article 91 of the Constitution states that “Without prejudice to the martial rule and state of emergency, fundamental rights, individual rights and responsibilities regulated under the first and second section of the Constitution, and political rights and duties contained in the fourth section thereof cannot be regulatedby the decrees.” In this regard, by means of regulating all of the industrial property rights that are under the scope of property rights, one of the fundamental rights by law, the Bill was prepared in order to prevent the cancellation of the Constitutional Court, and to enact the regulations by the law.
Even if it is unclear as to when this Bill would be enacted, it is possible that with the entry into force of this Bill, major developments and changes in industrial property field would be birthed. Some of the major regulations brought by the Bill are briefly examined, below.
