Who Owns a Design Commissioned in Turkey? Employees, Freelancers and Recovery Claims

Paying a Turkish designer or manufacturer does not, by itself, answer who owns the resulting design right. Article 70 of Industrial Property Code No. 6769 starts with the designer or successor. Article 73 contains specific rules for employees and provides that ownership of designs created under non-employment service contracts is determined by the parties’ agreement. An invoice, a licence and an assignment therefore require different analysis.

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For an overseas brand commissioning packaging, furniture, clothing or another product appearance in Turkey, ownership should be resolved before production and registration. This guide explains the contract and employment distinctions, joint ownership, recovery from an unauthorised applicant and the consequences for existing licensees. It addresses industrial design rights, not an automatic determination of every copyright or technical patent issue in the project.

Separate the designer, applicant, customer and registered owner

Article 70(1) of Code No. 6769 states that the design right belongs to the designer or successor and can be transferred. The designer is the person who created the relevant appearance; the legal person entitled to register or exploit it can derive its position through the applicable statutory or contractual chain.

The commercial customer, the person submitting the application and the registered owner can be different. A manufacturing company may commission an individual designer, while a foreign customer contracts only with the manufacturer. The customer’s agreement needs to address whether the manufacturer actually has the rights it promises to deliver.

Map the chain from the individual contributors to the business claiming ownership. Identify the relevant design versions and the agreements governing each contribution. A broad statement that everything belongs to the group does not explain how rights moved between separate companies or from a freelance creator to the contracting supplier.

Employee designs: Article 73 contains two different situations

Under Article 73(1), unless a special agreement or the nature of the work indicates otherwise, the employer owns designs created through the employee’s required activity or substantially based on the enterprise’s experience and work during the employment relationship. The employee’s duties and the actual development circumstances therefore matter.

Keep the employment agreement, job description, project instructions and development record together. A payroll entry proves an employment relationship but does not necessarily explain whether a particular design falls within the statutory category. Conversely, creating a file outside ordinary office hours does not by itself resolve the relationship between the design and the employee’s duties or the employer’s work.

Article 73(2) addresses designs outside paragraph 1 that employees create using the knowledge and resources of the workplace’s general field of activity. The employer becomes the right holder if it claims the design under that provision. The claim-dependent mechanism should not be confused with paragraph 1’s default allocation.

Article 74(1) gives the employee a right to remuneration for a design under Article 73(2), taking its importance into account. If the parties cannot agree, the court determines the amount. The article should not be paraphrased as a universal fixed bonus for every employee design, nor should the particular compensation right be omitted when relying on the employer’s claim.

Students, trainees and university work require attention

Article 73(3) extends the employee-design provisions to students, the specified unpaid trainees and designs resulting from scientific work or research by the identified higher-education teaching personnel. A project described commercially as an internship or university collaboration therefore requires examination of the statutory category and the relevant institutional arrangements.

For designs made by the teaching personnel covered by that paragraph, Article 74(2) requires the institutional revenue-sharing arrangement to give the designer at least half the income, with the allocation determined by the relevant institution’s governing board. The statutory reference is to income; it should not be casually replaced with a different contractual metric without analysis.

An overseas sponsor should obtain the university or employer’s authority and the applicable project documents before accepting an assignment from an individual contributor alone. This is an ownership-chain issue, not a reason to assume that every university-related design is unavailable for commercial licensing.

Freelance and commissioned designs depend on the agreement

Article 73(4) states that ownership of designs made under service-performance contracts outside employment is determined within the framework of the parties’ agreement. A foreign customer should therefore not import an assumed work-for-hire rule from another jurisdiction or rely solely on the fact that it paid the development fee.

The agreement should identify the design deliverables, versions, ownership allocation and authority to apply for registration. It should also distinguish pre-existing supplier material from newly commissioned work. A promise to deliver production-ready files can be fulfilled commercially without necessarily answering every legal ownership question unless the contract addresses both.

Specify the position of subcontractors. The principal supplier’s promise is not a substitute for the rights it needs from the individuals or businesses that actually create the design. Obtain appropriate evidence of the chain while avoiding unnecessary circulation of personal or confidential information.

For a cross-border agreement, governing law and the effect on Turkish industrial property rights require separate review. The international IP agreement guide explains a related conflict-of-laws issue. This article does not assume that the location of one meeting determines the law governing every employment or commissioning relationship.

Ownership, a licence and possession of files are not the same

A licence grants permission within its terms; an assignment transfers the right identified by the transaction. Access to drawings, production moulds or source files is a further practical matter. A company can possess a file without owning the design right, or own a right while lacking the production information needed to exploit it efficiently.

Article 148(4) subjects relevant industrial-property transactions to written form and requires notarised form for the validity of assignments. Where the transaction is an assignment, do not treat an ordinary payment receipt as the required legal instrument. The document should identify the actual rights transferred and the persons able to bind each party.

Article 148(5) regulates recordal and publication, including the restriction on asserting rights from unrecorded transactions against good-faith third parties, subject to its statutory reservation. Completion of the private contract and updating the register are therefore distinct steps. Keep evidence of both rather than treating the signed agreement as proof that the register has changed.

Article 75 supplies design-licence defaults, including non-exclusivity unless otherwise agreed and restrictions on transfer and sublicensing unless the contract permits them. A customer expecting exclusive manufacturing should secure that permission clearly instead of describing an ordinary licence as ownership.

Joint owners have specific use, licensing and litigation rules

Article 70(2) gives priority to the owners’ agreement and otherwise applies the Civil Code’s co-ownership provisions. It also permits an owner to deal with its share, use the design after notifying the others and bring a civil infringement action independently. An owner who sues must notify the other owners within one month so they can participate.

Third-party licensing requires unanimity under Article 70(3). If unanimity cannot be reached, the court can give licensing authority to one or more owners on equitable grounds. A majority economic interest should not be treated as automatic authority to license the whole design to an outside manufacturer.

Article 70(4) prevents division of the application or design for transfer or creation of rights, even where it is co-owned. A shared ownership percentage is not the same as splitting a single registration into separate designs by private instruction. Record the intended exploitation arrangements accurately without misdescribing the registered asset.

Recovering a design filed or disclosed by the wrong person

Article 71 applies where an application is filed or a design registered by someone other than the true owner, and also where an unregistered design is made public by the wrong person. The person claiming the true entitlement can seek judicial transfer of the design ownership or recognition as owner, while preserving the other rights and claims specified by the provision.

A partial entitlement can be recognised under co-ownership principles. The requested remedy should therefore match the claimant’s evidence. A person claiming one contribution to a joint design should not automatically seek sole ownership of every version without explaining the legal basis.

Article 71(3) provides a three-year period from publication of the registered design or disclosure of the unregistered design. Where the person lacking true entitlement acted in bad faith, that forfeiture period does not apply. The ordinary starting event is not simply the claimant’s discovery of the problem; obtain the actual publication or disclosure evidence.

The action, claims, final judgment and other events ending the case can be entered in the register and published on request under Article 71(4). They take effect against good-faith third parties from registration. The litigation plan should therefore include the register position and not focus only on correspondence between the immediate parties.

Ownership correction can end existing third-party rights

Article 72(1) states that, when ownership changes under Article 71, all third-party rights relating to the design end upon registration of the change. A licensee dealing with a person whose title is later corrected should not assume that payment of royalties makes the licence immune from the statutory consequence.

Paragraph 2 gives the former purported owner or a person who licensed from it a limited route to request a non-exclusive licence from the true owner if use had begun or serious preparations had been made before the true owner’s registration. The request period is two months from the Office’s notification of that registration.

The two-month period applies to the persons described in the design provision; it should not be confused with the different periods governing patent ownership correction. Article 72(3) excludes the benefit where the relevant person acted in bad faith when beginning use or making serious preparations. Preserve the actual licence, use chronology and Office notification.

This is a right to request the specified licence, not an automatic declaration that continued use is free or unrestricted. The resulting permission and the parties’ position must be assessed through the applicable legal framework. A commercial settlement should identify which rights are being recognised, transferred or licensed.

Build a rights file before production and registration

The useful file links the creators, employment or commissioning contracts, assignments, licences, design versions and register entries. Add the first-disclosure chronology because ownership and public availability are different questions. Our design launch guide explains novelty, disclosure and the narrower copying-based unregistered protection.

Where enforcement is contemplated, identify who can sue and under which right. The licensee enforcement guide addresses Article 158, which is distinct from a co-owner’s Article 70 position. A party’s commercial importance does not replace the legal basis for standing.

Finally, separate design ownership from copyright, trademarks, patents and ownership of physical tooling. A settlement or purchase agreement should state which assets it resolves. A clear chain of entitlement is valuable precisely because it avoids a vague promise that the customer owns everything while leaving the legally important documents unanswered.

Official legal sources

Primary provisions: Industrial Property Code No. 6769, Articles 70–76, 148 and 158. Official legislation is linked in the TÜRKPATENT legislation directory. This English explanation is not an official translation or a determination of ownership under a particular cross-border agreement.

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