Searching the Turkish Trademark Register: A Practical Guide

The first step with any new brand name is to check whether it is already on the register. TÜRKPATENT provides a free online search. Running it takes minutes; reading the results correctly is the harder part.

How to search

Open the Office’s search screen, enter the term — searching the root rather than the full word gives better coverage — and filter by the Nice classes relevant to your business. For each hit, check the filing and registration dates, the specification of goods and services, and the current status: pending, registered, refused, invalidated or expired.

Three blind spots in a self-search

• Similarity is not identity. The Office assesses visual, phonetic and conceptual similarity together, so marks spelled differently but pronounced alike may never appear in your results.
• Class boundaries are not walls. A mark in another class can still block you where a link between the goods can be established, and marks with a reputation are protected beyond their own classes.
• The register is not the whole picture. An unregistered mark used in the market for years can defeat your application through prior-use rights.

Timing

Applications filed a few days before yours may not yet be visible. Once a search comes back clean, do not delay: priority runs from the filing date.

See the full process in our registration guide or our clearance search service.

General information only, not legal advice. A register search does not replace a professional clearance opinion.