A Fairer Way To Determine Royalties In Turkish Compulsory Licensing

Compulsory licensing, which is regulated by both Article 99 of the repealed Decree Law 551 and Article 129 et seq of the Industrial Property Law, which follows Article 31 of the Trade-Related Aspect of Intellectual Property (TRIPs), is a fairly recent institution in Turkey. However, covid-19 has given new urgency to the debate on this issue.

Even though it has never actually been applied, compulsory licensing has been widely discussed, not only as a convenient tool to facilitate vaccines or preventive medicines needed to combat covid-19 in the short term, but also as a negotiation tool in the price discussions for certain vital medicines considered to be a burden on the public budget. Despite being popular, the fact that compulsory licensing has never been applied in Turkey means that its conditions and consequences have not been fully grasped, while the wording of the Industrial Property Law is quite ambiguous.