Copyright in Türkiye: Protection Without Registration

Unlike trademarks and patents, copyright in Türkiye requires no application. Under Law No. 5846 protection arises automatically when the work is created — which makes it the easiest right to acquire and the most widely misunderstood.

Not everything is a work

Protection requires that the output bear the characteristics of its author and fall within a statutory category: literary and scientific works (including software and databases), musical works, works of fine art (including photographs and graphic design) and cinematographic works. Copyright protects expression, not ideas: a business model, method or concept is not protected, but the text, drawing or code expressing it is.

Economic and moral rights

Economic rights — adaptation, reproduction, distribution, performance and communication to the public — can be assigned and licensed. Moral rights, including the right to be named and to object to modification, are as a rule not transferable. A clause stating that "all rights are transferred" therefore does not extinguish them.

Term

Protection lasts for the author’s life plus seventy years, calculated from the death of the last surviving co-author where there are several.

Remedy for unauthorised use

Turkish copyright law allows the rights holder to claim up to three times the amount that could have been demanded had a licence been agreed — the provision that does most of the deterrent work in practice, alongside claims to stop the infringement and, in qualifying cases, criminal liability.

See our article on using images found online, or contact us.

General information only, not legal advice.