Turkey is one of the top countries in terms of IP filing activities. According to the World Intellectual Property Indicators 2020 report recently published by the WIPO, Turkey ranked 11th in trademarks, 7th in designs, and 22nd in patents with regard to the filing activity for the year 2019. In terms of applications made only by residents, Turkey has ranked 8th in trademark, 6th in designs, and 14th in patents. This high volume of applications consequently leads to much greater numbers of any type of transactions that were made before the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office (“TPTO”). Indeed, a recent statistic shared by the TPTO has revealed that 21.325 transactions have been made between 08.02.2021 and 19.02.2021.
Consequently, the TPTO’s systems should not only be able to cope with this high volume of transactions to ensure a swift and high-quality service but also sufficiently secure to meet its obligations within the scope of data protection regulations. In this context, the TPTO has initiated a transition process to the new Electronic Document Management System on 08.02.2021 to comply with the Regulation on the Procedures and Principles to be applied in Official Correspondence which was published in the Official Gazette on 10.06.2020.
As part of the transition process, the TPTO has recently announced that:
- The 7-digit number, previously called as “customer number”, which is given by the TPTO to record the information of domestic and foreign real and legal persons in its database will now be called as “person number” and it will be used for transactions made by foreign real and legal persons. The Turkish ID number and the Tax Identification Number will continue to be used for domestic applicants.
- The TPTO will no longer request the address information for domestic applicants to shorten the procedures. The TPTO aims to make all notifications in the electronic environment and if needed, the address information would be automatically obtained from the Central Civil Registration System (“MERNIS”) or the Central Registration System (“MERSIS”). Therefore, it is no longer possible to submit an application for the recordal of the change of address by domestic applicants. However, foreign applicants would still need to file a separate application when a recordal of change of address is required.
- The applications for the recordal of change of title made by domestic applicants will be automatically completed upon checking MERNIS and MERSIS databases. The TPTO will continue to manually examine the applications and the required documents (the document approved by the component authorities showing the change of the title and if the document is in a foreign language, its Turkish translation approved by a sworn translator) for the recordal of change of title filed by foreign applicants.
- Lastly, the TPTO will continue to manually examine the applications and the required documents (the information/document obtained from the Turkish Trade Registry Gazette or the document approved by the component authorities showing the change of type and if the document is in a foreign language, its Turkish translation approved by a sworn translator) for the recordal of conversion filed by both domestic and foreign applicants.
Further updates may be expected during the transition process of the TPTO to the Electronic Document Management System.