A|T|A Turkish Patent & Trademark Law Group

Turkish Design Lawyers 

Ata Turkish Patent & Trademark Law Group guides its clients through the maze of regulations and procedures involved in obtaining a design patent in Turkey. In this regard, our attorneys assist clients to develop intellectual property portfolios that serve specific business objectives so as to yield clear strategic returns. In many cases, this means seeking the broadest claims to which an invention is entitled so as to foreclose competitors from market share. As corporate initiatives are increasingly driven by intellectual property, the quality of design patent prosecution advice rendered to a client can have enormous financial consequences.

Ata Turkish Patent & Trademark Group attorneys' expertise affords our clients the fullest range of design prosecution services and capability to render such advice:

• Preparation and filing of design patent applications
• Comprehensive prosecution services in Turkish for utility and design patents
• Prosecution of international design patent applications under the PCT
• Coordination of design patent prosecution in foreign countries and regions
• Counseling on "shop rights"
• Prosecuting interference contests to resolve priority in invention
• Design patent appeals to the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences of the  Turkish Patent Institute
• Rendering legal opinions on the strengths and weaknesses of design patents
• Rendering legal opinions on patentability, right-to-use, validity, enforceability, and infringement
• Design patent infringement litigation in Turkish Courts
• Design patent appeals in the Turkish Supreme Court

To permit our clients to build a patent portfolio that is integrated with their business strategies, we seek early on to understand the strategic goals of each client. We also counsel our clients on how to best build a portfolio that maximizes both core technologies and non-core technologies. Likewise, we counsel clients on processes and procedures for identifying potentially patentable technology and prioritizing inventions based on the strategic goals.

We also work with our clients to ensure they and their employees—inventors, engineers—understand the design patent process and follow policies and guidelines that protect against inadvertent loss of rights in an invention. In this regard, we routinely conduct industry and in-house seminars on the patentability process, including procedures on documenting conception of an invention, limitations on public written disclosures of the invention (such as in marketing materials or research papers), use of diligence in pursing an invention, and the disclosure requirements necessary to ensure that any issued design patent is as defensible as possible.

The firm provides design patent prosecution and counseling services in a wide range of technical and business areas, in almost every industry, and in both the retail and commercial markets.

Design Renewals

The protection period for a registered industrial design is 5 years and should be renewed every 5 years for 4 times for the extension of protection upto 25 years.

The renewal period of a registered design begins 6 months before the end of the protection. Designs can be renewed with late payment for up to 6 months after the end of protection.

Renewal fees should be deposited at the Turkish Patent Institute by a representative of the company or a trademark attorney. In case such fees are not deposited, registered designs are considered invalid, that is, the monopoly right thereof is removed and they became the property of the public.

Unlike patents and trademarks, there is no requirement to work/use of industrial designs in Turkey.

Turkish Design Litigation

Winning an IP case is the product of experience and the execution of a skillful, balanced strategy. In litigation, Ata Turkish Patent & Trademark Group capitalizes on its attorneys' experience in having filed and prosecuted hundreds of trademark, patent, and copyright applications. Our teams of IP attorneys and trial lawyers have litigated all types of intellectual property matters in Turkish courts.

Clients confronted with disputes involving their patents, trademarks, service marks, trade dress, trade secrets, or copyrights can rely on our experienced litigators to aggressively defend their interests in matters extending from infringement claims to unfair competition to disputes over commercial licensing agreements. We assist our clients in all stages of intellectual property conflicts and resolution of the conflict, from pre-litigation analysis and communications through final verdict and, if necessary, appeal.

Ata Turkish Patent & Trademark Group attorneys have successfully represented numerous corporations, including Fortune 500 companies, in infringement lawsuits involving intellectual property. Our experience includes successful appeals to Turkish Supreme Court. Our IP trial lawyers have also enforced and defended our clients' intellectual property rights in arbitrations, alternative dispute forums, and proceedings before the International Trade Commission.

We actively monitor the use of our clients' intellectual property, and we can act quickly to enforce these various rights against infringers through the effective use of temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions. With vast experience in both prosecuting and defending litigation cases involving patents, trademarks, and copyrights, we have been successful in recovering damages and quickly obtaining injunctions for our clients. In some cases, our commercial litigation experience allows us to resolve licensing and contract disputes quickly and efficiently.

Design Search

Companies know well that it is a must to provide their clients with better products and services in more convenient conditions compared to their competitors in national and international markets. It is clear that it is necessary to create exclusivities therefore. One of the two basic elements of creating such exclusivity is to create difference on the products and the services.

New aesthetic creations are within the topic of design. It is a fact that companies need to introduce continuous new designs in order that the customers prefer their products. But an aspect neglected by the companies is to find out for which products the competitor companies obtained design protection. For a company, to know the designs of the competitor company means to know its competitors better, therefore to act with a better business strategy. Not to know such things means that a company faces with the risk of imitating a product intentionally or non-intentionally, and this is such an important issue that it may cause the commercial life of a company or company authorities to come to an end.

Companies may watch the design applications in their sectors by subscribing to official bulletin of industrial designs monthly published by Turkish Patent Institute (TPE).

However, it is not easy for companies to conduct a general design search due to the fact that someone should trust only on classification search among design applications wherein one certain class shall give all applications filed. On the other hand, all designs owned by a company may be found out and the contents of such designs may be obtained.