Until recently, as a general practice of the
Turkish Patent and Trademark Office (“TPTO”), all information and documents in
relation to oppositions and counterviews were publicly available.
As of September2020, in accordance with Turkish
Personal Data Protection Law No. 6698, the TPTO has changed its practice and
started to no longer grant access to the opposition petitions and their
exhibits to general public for the reason that the opposition petitions and
their attachments may contain personal information and documents about
applicants and/or opponents.
With this recent change, persons/entities who are
not parties to the proceedings will only be able to view basic information
regarding the oppositions (opponent name, opposition date, grounds for the
oppositions etc.) on the TPTO’s web interface.
Accordingly, since only those who are party to the
proceedings are allowed to access the opposition petitions and their exhibits,
applicants are required to appoint a local Turkish representative for the
Turkish designations of their International Registrations to examine all the
documents.
The lack of an appointed local Turkish
representative for a Turkish designation of an International Registration
before the TPTO also presents itself as a serious problem in cases where
applicants decide to file their counterviews and/or raise a non-use defense
against oppositions. Indeed, in order to proceed such actions, the new
electronic filing system of the TPTO, called EPATS, requires the barcode number
of the opponent’s petition which is available to the local Turkish
representative only if the representative is appointed for the relevant
International Registration.
Under these circumstances, we recommend that
applicants who prefer to use the Madrid Protocol to seek protection of their
trademarks in Turkey, appoint a local representative for the Turkish
designation of their International Registrations to ensure effective defense
against a possible opposition.
You may contact us at trademarks@stock.com.tr for further information with respect to appointment of a local agent.