Newsletter-21

352 NEWSLETTER 2016 Industrial Property Law Bill* Att. Ecem Susoy Uygun Aim of the Bill With the Industrial Property Law Bill 1 (“Bill”) presented to the Turkish Grand National Assembly on April 6th, 2016, it is intended to protect the rights with regard to trademarks, geographical indica- tions, designs, patents, utility model and traditional product names. As specified in the preamble of the Bill (“Preamble”), in parallel with Turkey’s economic development, there has been significant progress in the field of industrial property rights, the applications of patents, designs and trademarks, in particular, have significantly increased. In line with the improvements in the industrial property field, and for the purpose of ensuring compliance with European Union regulations and international agreements, the Bill was drafted and, in this regard, it is expected to bring solutions to the problems encountered in practice, and to contribute to the realization of technologic, economic and so- cial progress. The Bill combines all separate and ununiformed regulations of trademarks, patents, industrial designs and protection of geographical indications under a single roof. As well, as specified in the Preamble, in the previous two years, the Constitutional Court has decided upon the repeal of certain provisions of Decree-Laws No. 551 and 556 due to the fact that they are contrary toArticle 91/1 of the Constitution with the following justification: “Intellectual and industrial property rights that are under the scope of intangible goods are one of the property rights regulated under Article 35 of the second part of the Constitution, entitled ‘Rights and Duties of an Individual,’ and since the first para- graph of Article 91 of the Constitution states that “Without prejudice * Article of June 2016 1 Please see http://www2.tbmm.gov.tr/d26/1/1-0699.pdf (Last access date: 15.07.2016).