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.
However, this registry is not a reliable source for trademark owners. Despite Article 7/1-ı, if a trademark is registered as being well-known, this will not necessarily prevent all later inappropriate trademarks being registered. Even if a trademark is registered as well-known, the trademark owner should continue to monitor third-party trademark applications.
Despite this, it is still worth a trademark owner obtaining a well-known registration for its trademark. Such a registration can be valuable evidence in any dispute which may later arise.
The rest of this article is locked for subscribers only. Please login to continue reading.
If you don't have a login, you will need to purchase a subscription to gain access to this article, including all our online content. Please use this link and follow the steps.
For multi-user price options, or to check if your company has an existing subscription to us that we can add you to for FREE, please email Atif Choudhury at achoudhury@worldipreview.com
trademark registration; well-known trademarks; TPI;
