January 21, 2003

By Elif Daldeniz, Patent & Trademark Attorney

Trademark Regulation Has Been Amended in Turkey.

The Amendments to the Regulation Pertaining to Decree-Law No. 556 on the Protection of Trade and Service Marks Entered Into Force on October 2, 2002

The amended provisions of the regulation brought formalistic changes to the procedure mainly with regard to supporting documents.

The most important amendments are as follows:

• Priority Document

  Under the new procedure, a notarial certified Turkish translation of the Priority document or of its notarial certified copy is required. No notarial legalizations for the translation of Priority documents were nesseray under the former procedure.

• Priority Claimed from Exhibitions

  The priority document shall certify the date and ofifical date of the opening of such exhibition where the goods and/or services upon which the trademark in question is used or the trademark printed on the packaging has been explicitly exhibited.

  The above underlined word "or" has replaced the former "and" in the former regulation,; as a result the scope of the exhibition is rendered flexible. The exhibition shall either include the goods and/or services upon which/for which the trademark is used OR the packaging upon which the trademark is printed.

• Translation of Supporting Documents

  The translations of supporting documents submitted in the enclosure of the trademark application request, i.e. the Home Registration Certificate or a Certificate obtained from the Chamber of Trade and Commerce or from the Commercial Register, shall be notarial legalized as well.

• Representative

  Information pertaining to the identity of the representative of the applicant/registrant will also be included in the publications of the applications and of the registrations.

  Under the former regulation, information as to the representative of the applicant or the trademark owner were not published neither in the Official Trademark Bulletin nor in the Official Trademark Gazette. The Turkish Patent Institute began publishing these informations recently.

• Official Forms

  The forms for the application request and for filing an opposition against a published application have been revised.