Registering Well-Known Trademarks In Turkey

Article 7/1-ı of the Turkish Trademark Decree Law no. 556 established a legal basis in 1995 for the Turkish Patent Institute (TPI) to refuse trademark applications on the basis that an application is similar to a well-known trademark. However, at the time, there was no mechanism available to the TPI for establishing whether a given trademark was well known or not.

Therefore, the TPI established the well-known trademark registry with the goal of recording and making information about well-known trademarks publicly accessible. The TPI has issued several bulletins since 1996 announcing the trademarks which the TPI deemed to be "well-known". By 2004, the TPI had recorded more than 100 trademarks as being well-known.