An effective tool against counterfeit and pirated goods: customs measures in Turkey
Turkey has a special global geographical location, at a crossroads of the flow of goods between Europe and Asia. This puts Turkey in a critical position regarding counterfeited goods traffic within the European Union (EU) internal market and the external markets, to where fake goods produced in Turkey are exported.
The counterfeit market in Turkey is huge, although recently the police and customs authorities have worked together to prevent sales of counterfeits. There have also been various programmes to raise public awareness of counterfeits. To effectively tackle the production and sale of counterfeited goods, Turkey amended its customs rules covering intellectual and industrial rights in 2009 and 2010 to comply with those in the EU.
Turkish customs authorities have simplified destruction systems, extended customs applications from one month to 12 months and created centralised customs application systems for IP protection at Turkish customs, replacing the practice of filing customs applications at each customs authority separately.
Turkish customs authorities have also arranged a number of training programmes for customs officials and controllers, and developed their software capability to monitor customs applications more efficiently. Despite these attempts, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report (2011–2012), Turkey is still ranked in 86 out of 144 countries in terms of the quality of IP protection.
You can still see fake and imitated goods in daily life, which is mostly because of low purchase power, insufficient awareness about customer rights and lack of enforcement of the laws in due course, etc. These factors make Turkey a country in which IP owners need to protect their rights.
Considering the intercontinental location of Turkey, customs applications are an effective tool used by the customs authorities to protect IP. Customs applications and enforcement Customs applications can be filed for intellectual and artistic works (copyrights), topographies of integrated circuits, breeders’ rights of new plant varieties, patent and utility model rights, industrial design rights, geographical indications, trademarks, supplementary protection certificates and other intellectual and industrial property rights.
Filing procedures for customs applications
The customs applications can be filed electronically at the Turkish customs authorities by using a specific form, namely Ek-13, or by using an electronic data exchange system. If the rights holder is located abroad, a representative specifically appointed by an attorney or authorised person (licensee, distributor, etc) can file a request on behalf of the rights holder.
The rights holders can file centralised applications for customs applications at the Turkish Customs Directorate. All the Turkish customs authorities can access the database every day. The application should cover information enabling the customs authority to identify the goods requiring IP protection. In this regard, it is important for the rights holder to provide any information to allow the customs authorities to easily recognise the goods during their routine checks.
The customs application should cover:
