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| If you do not want the creativity of your designs to be taken and used by others, you need to make use of our authorized patent office to protect your investment. Planning and design is an important form of creativity. Don't be a naive victim in today's competitive markets! Industrial Design Registration (Designs and Models)The Turkish Law Regarding the Protection of Industrial Design Rights Number 554, article 3 defines design as follows: "A Design is defined as a whole made up of any elements or characteristics that can be perceived by human senses such as shape, type, form, color, texture, material or flexibility, and which form the whole of a product or any part or decoration thereof." In order for an industrial design to be registered and protected, it must be new or contain distinguishing characteristics. If the design of a part of a product is itself also new or contains distinguishing characteristics, it also benefits from the protection. If an identical design has not been presented to the public anywhere in the world before the date of application or date of previous rights, then it is deemed a new design. Here, a "universal, absolute" development is required. In short, in order for a design to benefit from protection, two conditions must be kept in mind. These are: a - It must be established that the design is new with objective criteria of a universal nature. Consequently there must be no design done by someone else which according to specialists in the field is the same or similar on basic points. b - The design must have distinguishing features according to the average consumer. In the implementation of the technical functions, if a design gives no freedom to the designer regarding the design's characteristics or components then it does not fall under the scope of protection. If the designed products or products on which the design is to be applied have a design which can be produced in such a way that it is in a form or size which is required in order to mechanically mount or connect to another product, it also falls outside the scope of protection. However, if the conditions of a new development or distinguishing characteristics are met, in a system where modules are made of similar or different units (as in the case of furniture modules or toy Legos) such that the design enable these units to be connected together in limited or limitless types of manners, such designs fall under the scope of protection.
The owner of design rights whose registered design has been copied can request the following legal actions from the court: 1. Establishing whether or not an activity has been violated. 2. The stopping of activities which violate the design rights.
3. The removal/prevention of the violation and compensation of monetary and
emotional damages.
4. The confiscation of articles whose use or production caused the violation of design rights; and vehicles, tools, and machines used to produce said articles.
5. If the items that have been confiscated according to article three consist of non-movable property (e.g. land or buildings),
the value of the items in question are removed from the amount of compensation.
6. The taking of precautions to prevent the continued violation of the design rights; changing the form of the tools and products
that were confiscated according to article three; or if it is impossible to prevent the violation of the design rights, the request for
the destruction of the offending articles. 7. The payment by the violating party of
all court costs related to the violation of design rights; informing all parties concerned and announcement to the public through the press.
8. The damages claimed by the owner of the design rights do not only relate to losses of
activity but also lost profits due to the violation of the design rights. The lost profit is calculated based
on one of the following items, chosen by the owner of the design rights who bore
the loss of profit:
a - If there had been no competition from the party violating the design rights, the probable profit that the design owner could have obtained, b - The amount of profit obtained by the design rights violator by the use
of the design, c - The amount that would have to be paid had the design rights violator paid a legally appropriate license agreement to use the design. 9. If the reputation of the brand name is damaged as a result of bad or inappropriate use by the design rights violator, the design owner can ask for additional
compensation.
10. As a precaution, the request of confiscation during import or export by customs officials of the goods which caused the violation of rights. |
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