The Viewpoint of Defence Industry on Industrial Property

Gürşen SEVİNÇ General Manager of Grup Ofis Trademark & Patent Agency, Trademark and Patent Attorney

The production of supplies and equipments necessary for the Turkish Armed Forces and creating an abroad market serve as a basis for the activities of collaboration of defence industry.

Technology transfer through mutual production and marketing is undertaken in the collaboration activities carried out in a multi-sided and binary-based way with foreign countries.

It is required that the product, system and capabilities are marketed to foreign countries for the continuation of employment and improvement of defence industry.

However, besides the standard defence industry products Turkey manufactures, are the products which are qualified as inventions, patents, utility models, industrial designs, protected against copying in the context of industrial property law? Are the trademarks labelled on the products made registered?

Are there any precautions taken against the possibility that the product might be copied in a technologically developped or underdeveleopped country that we cooperate with or market individually.

As already known, industrial property is the definition of an incorporeal right that enables inventions, innovations, new designs and original works, on behalf of their first appliers; goods produced, marketed, sold in trade, on behalf of signs that is to say mark owners that would distinguish them, to be registered, protected and thus it enables these people to have the right to produce and sell the product for a specific period of time.

That the industrial property rights were taken into protection under legislations takes its roots from the Roman Law. An act that prompts studies about fine arts was put into effect in Venice, 1474. This act is considered to be the basis of the patent laws.

The first international agreement on the protection of industrial property was signed in Paris, March 23rd, 1883.

The Paris Convention that Turkey has been included since the day it was signed, has 169 member countries.

The basis of the current legislation about industrial property rights in Turkey dates back to PATENT RIGHT LAW of 1879.

This law that has been translated from French patent law and that is one of the first applications in the world has been in force for 116 years in Turkey wihout making any change. The first application about registration and protection of marks in Turkey, however, started with Ottoman Ideograph Regulations and kept its validity for 94 years until 1965 in which law 551 came into force. The Trademarks Law, no 551, that had been in effect since 1965 governed for 30 years until 1995 when the Decree Law no 556 came into force.

The Turkish Patent Institute was established in June 24th, 1994 on the purpose of presenting the current information and documentation to the public benefit, protecting the rights of holders of the rights for a period of time.

The works of The Turkish Patent Institute, ongoing for 12-13 years, have been effective in the topic of Industrial Property to be put in the agenda of Turkey.

Then, what is the viewpoint of defence industry on the topic?

We find out from the researches we made that defence industry does not give much attention to this significant topic. A limited number of companies that manufacture defence industry products have their trademarks registered, get certificates of patents, utility models to their technological products developped in the structure of Research and Development (R&D) activities; and get certificates of industrial design to their visual innovations. It is observed that many other producers do not pay attention to this subject.Copying is a chain of faults we have encountered for years in every country. It should be kept in mind that a mark that has made a good name for itself in the market, a significant technological invention, an apperance-wise different design will always be copied in every part of the world.

While copying; pecuniary penalty, imprisonment, closure of the working place and getting banned from trading as a consequence of a legal action are usually not known or disregarded. If your trademark, invention, product that you think you made an innovation in its appearance is of importance to you and you do not want to enter into a legal battle that would go on for months in and outside the country, you should hurry in getting under the protection of industrial property system.

Time might be working against you.

Gürşen Sevinç was born in 1939, in Akşehir. He graduated from Ankara Economic and Commercial Sciences Academy in the academic year of 1961-1962. Following the “Mathematical Statistics Program” of the State Institute of Statistics, he got the certificate in 1966-1967. He made Actuarial examinations in Social Security Enterprises as the guest of International Labor Organization in 1978, Geneva. He executed vice presidency in the Turkish Retirement Fund. He executed presidency in the Head Office of Social Security Organization for Artisans and the Self-Employed. He also prepared the supervision reports of Tübitak (the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) and Tüsside (Turkish Institute for Industrial Management) during the two-year period of the prime ministry auditorship. He became a trademark and patent attorney passing the examinations which TPE (Turkish Patent Institute) prepared in 1996. In 1984, he founded Grup Ofis Trademark & Patent Agency and started his activities about Industrial Property Services. He prepared interviews and articles about trademarks, patents, industrial designs, etc for magazines, bulletins and newspapers. He attended panels and made presentations. He is the founder and still the vice president of PEM (Patent and Trademark Attorneys Association). Gürşen Sevinç is now the general manager of Grup Ofis Trademark & Patent Agency Limited Company which has around 7000 clients in and outside the country, more than 40 employees and www.patentofisim.com which is the only online website of trademark, patent, design search-watchrenewal and trademark application.