Someone Registered My Trademark in Turkey: How Foreign Brand Owners Get It Back

You are about to enter the Turkish market, or you have been selling there for years through a local partner, and then you discover it: your brand name is already registered at the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office (TÜRKPATENT), in someone else's name. Sometimes it is a former distributor. Sometimes it is an importer who wanted leverage in a price negotiation. Sometimes it is a professional squatter who files hundreds of foreign brand names and waits.

This is one of the most common problems foreign companies bring to us, and it is almost never hopeless. Turkish law gives the genuine owner four separate routes to take the mark back. What decides the outcome is not who "really" owns the brand worldwide, but which route you choose and whether you are still inside its deadline.

Why This Happens: Turkey Is a First-to-File Country

Under Industrial Property Law No. 6769, trademark rights in Turkey arise from registration, not from use. TÜRKPATENT does not ask an applicant to prove that the brand is theirs, that they have ever sold anything under it, or that they invented it. If the name is free in the register and clears the examination on absolute grounds, it gets published.

That is why your reputation in Germany, the United States or the Gulf does not, by itself, stop a Turkish filing. It is also why the person who registered your brand is not committing a crime by doing so: the system only reacts when the genuine owner reacts. For a wider view of how the register works, see our guide on how to register a trademark in Turkey.

Step 1: Find Out Exactly What You Are Facing

Before choosing a strategy, pull the file. You need five pieces of information:

• Application number and filing date. Everything is measured against this date. Your own evidence has to predate it.
• Current status. Is it a pending application not yet published, an application published in the Official Trademark Bulletin, or a completed registration?
• The classes. A squatter often files far more classes than they could ever use, which is useful to you later.
• The owner. A company you have dealt with, a person connected to your distributor, or an unrelated third party. This single fact can change the route entirely.
• Registration date, if registered. The five-year clocks run from here.

The status determines your window. If the mark is published in the Bulletin, you may have only weeks left.

If the Mark Is Still an Application: File an Opposition

Once TÜRKPATENT publishes an application in the Official Trademark Bulletin, any interested party has two months from the publication date to file an opposition. This deadline is strict and cannot be extended. Missing it does not end your case, but it pushes you into the slower and more expensive court route.

The grounds you can rely on as a foreign brand owner include:

• Likelihood of confusion with your earlier mark, if you already hold a Turkish or Madrid-designated registration.
• Unauthorised filing by an agent or representative. If your distributor, agent or commercial representative filed without your consent, this is a ground on its own.
• Prior use and genuine ownership. An unregistered sign that you were genuinely using can defeat a later filing. Turkish courts take this seriously; see Prior Use Trumps Registration.
• Well-known mark protection under Article 6bis of the Paris Convention, even without any Turkish registration.
• Bad faith. A separate and powerful ground, discussed below.

If TÜRKPATENT rejects your opposition, you can appeal to the Re-examination and Evaluation Board (YİDK), and then challenge the Board's decision before the specialised IP courts in Ankara. Each of those steps has its own two-month deadline.

If the Mark Is Already Registered: Four Routes

Route 1: Invalidation on the Ground of Bad Faith

Bad faith is the strongest weapon against a squatter, and Turkish courts apply it robustly. The core question is whether the applicant filed knowing of your brand and intending to block you, extract payment, or free-ride on your reputation. Typical indicators the courts accept:

• The applicant had a commercial relationship with you (distributor, supplier, customer, former employee).
• The mark is identical or nearly identical to yours, including a distinctive logo, invented word or stylisation that could not plausibly be independent creation.
• The applicant has filed a series of other well-known third-party brands.
• The applicant contacted you offering to sell the registration, or demanded payment to release it.
• The applicant has never used the mark and has no activity in the registered classes.

We have covered decided cases on exactly this pattern: serial registration of a famous mark leading to full invalidation and a celebrity name registered in bad faith.

Timing matters here, with one important exception. In general, if you knowingly tolerate the use of a later registered mark for five consecutive years, you lose the right to seek invalidation; that is the acquiescence rule, and it has ended real cases (see how acquiescence ended a case after ten years of silence and an invalidity action filed six years too late). Acquiescence does not protect a registrant who acted in bad faith. That exception is why bad faith is worth pleading properly rather than as an afterthought.

Route 2: Demand Transfer, Not Cancellation (Agent and Representative Filings)

This is the route foreign companies most often do not know about, and it is usually the best outcome available.

Where your commercial agent or representative has registered your mark, or a sign indistinguishably similar to it, without your consent and without a justified reason, Turkish law lets you demand that the registration be transferred to you instead of cancelled. The practical difference is significant: you inherit the existing filing date rather than starting again at the back of the queue, which protects you against anyone who filed in the gap.

The relationship does not have to be a formal written agency. A distribution arrangement, an exclusive importer, or a local partner who handled your sales can fall within it, and this is a question of evidence: contracts, invoices, order confirmations, correspondence and marketing material in which they present themselves as your representative in Turkey.

No separate limitation period is written into this provision, but the general five-year acquiescence rule can still be raised against you. Do not sit on it.

Route 3: Non-Use Cancellation (Revocation)

A registered mark must be put to genuine use in Turkey within five years of registration, and must not then be left unused for five consecutive years. A squatter, by definition, is not using the mark. Once that five-year window has passed, you can request revocation.

Two points make this route attractive. First, since 10 January 2024 revocation requests on the ground of non-use are decided by TÜRKPATENT itself rather than by a court, which is faster and cheaper than litigation. Second, the burden of proof sits on the registrant: they must produce evidence of genuine commercial use, and token or symbolic use will not save them. Our article on what counts as proof of use explains the standard, and a decided case shows it working the other way, where a company defeated a cancellation claim by proving years of real use.

The limitation is arithmetic: if the registration is only two years old, this route is not yet open to you.

Route 4: Well-Known Mark Protection

If your brand is well known, protection does not depend on you holding a Turkish registration. A mark that is well known in the sense of the Paris Convention can block a later identical or similar filing, and a mark with a genuine reputation in Turkey can be protected even across dissimilar goods and services where the later use would take unfair advantage of, or damage, that reputation.

The catch is evidential. "Well known" is a high bar, and it must be established with market data, sales figures, advertising spend, media coverage, survey evidence and recognition in Turkey specifically, not only abroad. See well-known trademark protection in Turkey for the conditions and scope, and a damages award of TRY 418,000 protecting a well-known mark.

The Evidence That Actually Decides These Cases

Every route above turns on the same thing: dated proof that your use predates their filing date, and that it has a real connection to Turkey. Start assembling this before you instruct anyone. What works:

• Invoices, packing lists and customs declarations for goods shipped to Turkish buyers, with dates.
• The distribution or agency agreement, purchase orders, and the email trail with the party who registered the mark.
• Catalogues, price lists, packaging artwork and manuals bearing the mark, with printing or revision dates.
• Trade fair participation in Turkey: stand contracts, photographs, exhibitor listings.
• Your earlier registrations abroad, Madrid Protocol records, and the date of first use in your home market.
• Website archive captures, Turkish-language pages, social media posts and advertising invoices targeting Turkey.
• Press coverage and third-party references to the brand.

Foreign-language documents need certified Turkish translations, and documents issued abroad frequently need notarisation and an apostille. Building that file takes weeks, which is another reason not to wait until the opposition deadline is days away.

How Long It Takes

• Opposition at TÜRKPATENT: typically decided within several months to about a year, depending on workload and whether the applicant requests proof of use.
• YİDK appeal: adds a further period on top, followed by a two-month window to take the Board's decision to court.
• Invalidation action: commonly one and a half to three years at first instance, since the court will usually appoint an expert panel, plus appeal.
• Non-use revocation at TÜRKPATENT: the fastest of the contentious routes, because it is an administrative procedure.

Official fees are revised every year, and attorney fees depend on the complexity of the evidence, so we give a fixed quotation once we have seen the file. Our pricing page sets out how we work.

Five Mistakes Foreign Companies Make

1. Negotiating before securing the legal position. Opening with an offer to buy the registration tells the other side exactly how much the brand is worth to you, and the two-month opposition clock keeps running while you exchange emails. Establish your position first, then negotiate from it if you choose to.
2. Assuming an EU or US registration covers Turkey. It does not. An EU trademark stops at the EU border; see EUTM versus Turkish trademark. If you want Turkey through the international system, it must be designated; see the Madrid Protocol and Turkey.
3. Nobody is watching the Bulletin. Most squatting cases become expensive purely because the two-month opposition window passed unnoticed. A watch service costs a fraction of an invalidation action.
4. Suing the wrong party. Cancellation and invalidity actions have to be directed at the correct defendant, and getting this wrong can cost you the case on procedure alone. We wrote about exactly this trap in the wrong defendant trap.
5. Continuing to ship as if nothing happened. A registered owner in Turkey can record the mark with Customs. If they do, your own genuine goods can be detained at the border as suspected counterfeits, and you become the one filing urgent applications. Our case notes on customs seizures show how effective that mechanism is when it is pointed at you.

You Will Need a Turkish Trademark Attorney

This is not a recommendation but a rule. Applicants and right holders who are not domiciled in Turkey must act before TÜRKPATENT through a trademark attorney registered on the official roster. Filings, oppositions, revocation requests and appeals made otherwise are not processed. The same applies to service of TÜRKPATENT's decisions, which is why foreign owners without a local representative often learn about a deadline only after it has expired.

How to Make Sure It Never Happens Again

• File in Turkey before you appoint a distributor, not after. This single step removes most of the risk, and the cost is a small fraction of any of the routes above.
• Put it in the contract. Every distribution and agency agreement should state that the local partner acquires no rights in the marks and may not file for them or anything similar, in any country, and must transfer any such filing on request.
• Choose your classes properly. Protection only exists in the classes you register; see our note on the Nice Classification.
• Set up a watch service so that a conflicting application reaches you while the opposition window is still open.
• Record the registration with Turkish Customs once granted, so that counterfeits are stopped at the border rather than in court.

How Elçi Patent Can Help

We act for foreign brand owners in exactly these disputes: searching and reporting on the conflicting file, advising which of the four routes fits your facts and your deadline, preparing oppositions and invalidation actions, negotiating transfers where that is the faster commercial answer, and putting a permanent watch and customs recordation in place afterwards. We work in English, and we handle the Turkish-language procedure end to end. If you are a law firm acting for the brand owner, see our page for law firms.

If your brand has been registered by someone else in Turkey, send us the application or registration number and a short account of your relationship with the other party. Contact us for an initial assessment of which route is open to you and how much time is left on it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Someone registered my brand in Turkey. Do I have any rights at all if I never registered there?

Yes. Prior genuine use, an agent or representative relationship, well-known mark status and bad faith are all grounds that do not require you to hold a Turkish registration. What they do require is dated evidence connecting your use to Turkey before their filing date.

Is a bad-faith registration ever time-barred?

The five-year acquiescence rule that normally bars a late invalidity action does not apply where the registration was made in bad faith. That said, delay always weakens the evidence and can complicate related infringement claims, so acting early remains the better strategy.

My former distributor registered the mark. Can I simply have it put in my name?

Where the filing was made by a commercial agent or representative without your consent and without justification, the law allows you to demand transfer of the registration rather than its cancellation. It is usually the preferable remedy because you keep the earlier filing date. You will need to prove the representative relationship and the absence of consent.

They are offering to sell me the trademark. Should I buy it?

Sometimes a negotiated assignment is the fastest and cheapest solution, particularly where your evidence is thin or the mark has been registered for years. But get an assessment of your legal position first. A squatter who learns that your opposition deadline has passed will price accordingly.

Can I stop them from selling while the case is pending?

Preliminary injunctions are available in Turkish IP proceedings, including orders to stop use, seize goods and block access to websites. They are granted on a case-by-case basis and normally require security, and the strength of your prima facie evidence is decisive.

How do I find out whether someone has applied for my brand?

Applications are published in the Official Trademark Bulletin, which is where the two-month opposition period starts running. A watch service monitors the Bulletin for your mark and for confusingly similar signs, and alerts you inside the window.

Should I file my own application while the dispute is running?

Usually yes. Filing establishes your own date, covers you if the other registration eventually falls away, and protects against a third party filing in the meantime. It needs to be coordinated with the opposition or invalidation strategy rather than done in isolation.