With the entry into force of the Industrial Property Code no.
6769 (“IP Code”) on 10 January 2017, the administrative
revocation of trade marks has been introduced into Turkish Trade
Mark Law and revocation proceedings are entrusted to the Turkish
Patent and Trade Mark Office (“the Office”) instead of
Turkish Courts. However, the implementation of administrative
revocation was postponed for 7 years, and during this transition
period, revocation requests continued to be filed before civil
courts, as was before the enactment of the IP Code.
As of 10 January 2024, which corresponds to the end of 7 years
postponement, the Office started accepting administrative
revocation requests as preliminary requests, but did not review
such requests in terms of their merits due to the lack of an
implementing regulation.
On 15 March 2025, the Office finally published the Amendments on the Regulation on Implementation of the Industrial Property Code and shed light on details of the procedure, such as timelines, official fees (including application and escrow fees to be reimbursed to the successful party under certain conditions), and formal requirements.
At this stage, we expect the Office to complete the procedural deficiencies in the pending revocation requests that have been filed until the entry into force of the Regulation, by sending official notices to the applicants informing them of deficiencies, if any, and proceed with the examination by defrosting the backlog of revocation requests swiftly and to finalise the pending applications. We hope that, in comparison to judicial revocation proceedings heard before the civil courts, the administrative revocation procedure to be conducted by the Office shall enable time- and cost-efficient review of revocation requests filed based on lack of genuine use, becoming generic or misleading for registered goods or services and being used contrary to technical specifications (for the guarantee or collective marks)
First published by ECTA in Feb 28, 2025.
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