Patents, utility models and designs in Türkiye

You developed a product, showed it at a fair in Istanbul, and the response was strong. Six months later the patent application is refused for lack of novelty. What destroyed it was not a competitor — it was your own stand.

What each right covers

• Patent — a technical solution to a technical problem. Requires novelty, inventive step and industrial applicability. Protection up to twenty years.
• Utility model — the same novelty requirement but no inventive step. Faster and cheaper, though processes and chemical substances are excluded. Protection ten years.
• Design — the appearance of a product: line, shape, colour, texture. Five years on registration, renewable.
• Copyright — software, text, drawings. Arises without registration.

Novelty goes faster than people expect

Novelty means not made available to the public anywhere in the world before the filing date. A trade fair, a social media post, a deck sent to a prospective customer — any of these can count. There is a short grace period for the inventor's own disclosure, but it is not identical across countries and it is not something to build a strategy on. File first, then show.

When a utility model is enough

If your product is a clever but not radical improvement on something that exists, a patent application will often fail on inventive step. A utility model reaches a granted right faster and opens the same routes against infringers. Where the product cycle is two years, ten years of protection is already more than you need.

Rights are territorial. A patent granted elsewhere has no effect in Türkiye — but it creates a priority date, if you act inside the deadline.

Filing from outside Türkiye

You can designate Türkiye through the PCT route or file directly with the Turkish office; for designs, the Hague system is available. Türkiye is a party to the European Patent Convention, so a European patent can be validated there. What governs everything is the first filing date: it becomes the priority date for every later country.

Who owns the invention

For employee inventions the employer can claim the rights but owes compensation in return. With contractors the position is reversed: without a written assignment the right stays with the person who did the work. If development or manufacturing happens in Türkiye, those agreements belong to the Turkish side of the project and should be governed accordingly.