Wrong Person Registered Your Patent in Turkey? Entitlement and Recovery Under Articles 109–111

When a Turkish patent has been granted to someone other than the person legally entitled to it, Article 111 of Industrial Property Code No. 6769 allows the true right holder to ask the court to transfer the patent. A dispute while the application is pending follows Article 110. These remedies concern entitlement to the right, not merely whether a competing product infringes or whether the invention satisfies patentability requirements.

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For overseas inventors, research businesses and investors, the distinction is practical. A developer, local partner or former collaborator can appear in the register while another person claims a superior chain of entitlement. The response requires more than writing to TÜRKPATENT to say the registration is wrong. The statutory route, filing stage, ownership evidence and deadlines must be identified together, including the consequences for existing licensees.

Article 109: identify the person entitled to apply

Article 109(1) gives the right to seek a patent to the inventor or the inventor’s successors and permits transfer of that right. The claimant therefore needs to establish either its own inventorship or the legal chain through which it acquired the entitlement. Paying project costs, commissioning research and being named on a commercial presentation are not interchangeable with the statutory basis for ownership.

Where several persons jointly made the invention, Article 109(2) gives the entitlement to all of them unless they agreed otherwise. A claim for a share can therefore be different from a claim to remove every other participant. Technical contributions should be identified accurately rather than rewritten after the commercial relationship breaks down.

Article 109(3) addresses independent invention by more than one person: entitlement belongs to the earlier applicant provided that the earlier application has been published. Article 109(4) also presumes, until the contrary is proved, that the first applicant is entitled. An overseas claimant must distinguish an allegation of appropriation from independent development and must produce evidence capable of addressing the statutory presumption.

Prepare a technical and legal chain of entitlement

Separate the technical history from the legal transfer history. Laboratory records, design iterations, correspondence and technical instructions can help identify who contributed to the invention. Employment records, assignment documents, succession records and corporate transactions address how rights moved from the inventor to the company now claiming ownership. Neither category should be treated as a substitute for the other.

For group companies, map each relevant legal person. The parent that funded research, the subsidiary employing engineers and the entity named as applicant can be different. A licence to use technology does not itself prove ownership of the right to seek the patent. Our co-owned patent guide explains the separate position where the dispute concerns a jointly held asset.

Preserve original documents and their dates. Later explanations should be marked as such and connected to the underlying records. Do not backdate development notes or replace historical drawings with a current version that happens to resemble the patent claims. The technical relationship between the claimed invention and the work relied upon needs to be demonstrated, not merely asserted through a project name.

International research can also raise applicable-law and employee-invention questions. Do not assume that the same contract clause governs every national patent-family member or every employee’s rights. The Turkish application or patent is the asset addressed by this guide; the claimant’s broader ownership chain may require examination of additional legal rules and documents.

A pending application: the Article 110 court route

Article 110(1) says that lack of entitlement cannot be asserted before the Office as an ownership dispute and maintains the applicant’s presumed entitlement until the contrary is proved. Under paragraph 2, a person claiming to be the true holder under Article 109(1) can sue the applicant during the grant procedure and notify the Office of the action.

The court can suspend the grant process until the entitlement judgment becomes final. That possibility should not be described as an automatic suspension produced by a private complaint or by filing an email with the Office. The case file should distinguish the relief requested, any order actually made and the procedural status recorded by TÜRKPATENT.

Under Article 110(8), the application cannot be withdrawn without the claimant’s consent until the entitlement judgment becomes final. This protection matters because an ownership dispute should not be analysed solely as a contest over a certificate already issued. The application itself and the ability to preserve its filing position can be the economically important assets.

A person claiming a partial right on the basis of having made the invention together with the applicant can seek recognition of joint entitlement under Article 110(6). Frame the requested relief to match that position. A demand for sole ownership requires a different factual explanation from a demand to be recognised as a co-owner.

After a successful application-stage judgment: three months to choose

If the entitlement judgment becomes final in the claimant’s favour, Article 110(3) gives the successful claimant three months from finality to act concerning the still-valid application. The available choices are to have the application accepted and continued as its own, to file a new application for the same invention using any existing priority right, or to request rejection of the disputed application.

Under Article 110(4), the new application filed through that statutory route is processed with the date of the first application and the first application becomes invalid. This is not a general promise that any replacement application filed after a dispute automatically receives an earlier date. The conditions of the specific route and the relevant documents must be satisfied.

If the successful claimant makes none of the prescribed requests within three months, Article 110(5) treats the disputed application as withdrawn. Winning the case is therefore not the last administrative step. The finality record, the chosen route and the Office submission should be separately diarised and retained.

Article 110(7) extends the specified mechanism to divisional applications. Identify each relevant application rather than assuming that a request naming one asset resolves every related filing. Where grant occurs while the case is pending, Article 110(9) converts the application-entitlement dispute into a patent-usurpation action; the grant event must be reflected in the litigation file.

A granted patent: transfer under Article 111

Article 111(1) permits a person claiming to be the true right holder under Article 109(1) to request judicial transfer of a patent granted to someone else, without prejudice to the other patent-related rights and claims reserved by the provision. The remedy is directed at obtaining the right, not simply removing the registration from existence.

Article 111(2) permits recognition of a partial right according to co-ownership principles. The proposed judgment and register result should identify the ownership position sought. A commercial demand for a share of royalties is not necessarily the same as a claim for a registered share of the patent.

The ordinary period under Article 111(3) is two years from publication of the grant. In bad-faith cases, the right can be exercised until the end of the patent’s protection period. The provision does not state that the ordinary two years begins when the claimant personally discovers the filing. Obtain the actual grant publication and investigate the bad-faith allegations separately instead of choosing whichever date seems more convenient.

Bad faith must be supported by the relevant facts. Prior access to confidential research, contractual restrictions and the history of the parties’ communications can require examination, but an unsuccessful business relationship does not by itself prove every element of the claim. Keep allegations proportionate to the evidence and distinguish established documents from matters still disputed.

Register entries affect third parties and existing licences

Article 111(4) requires the action and the final judgment to be entered in the register and published in the Bulletin. Their effects against good-faith third parties arise from the date of registration. The litigation plan should therefore include the register position, not only service of court papers between the immediate parties.

Under Article 111(5), when ownership changes through this mechanism, third-party licences and other rights relating to the patent end upon registration of that change. This is a specific consequence of the entitlement remedy. A buyer or licensee should not assume that its agreement with the former registered owner remains untouched merely because it paid a substantial fee.

Equally, termination of existing rights is not the end of the analysis for every affected operator. Paragraphs 6 to 9 create a limited route for certain prior users to request a non-exclusive licence from the true owner. The prerequisites, notification date and applicable period must be examined individually.

The former owner and earlier licensees have different request periods

Article 111(6) covers the person later found not to be the true owner and a person who entered into a licence with that person before the lawsuit. To qualify, use of the invention or serious preparations for use must have begun before the true owner’s registration. A licence signed only after the action began does not satisfy the stated pre-action contractual condition.

Article 111(7) gives the former registered owner two months and the licensee four months to request the non-exclusive licence. Those periods begin when the Office notifies the relevant person that the true owner has been entered in the register. They are not simply two or four months from the judgment date or the date a business hears about the dispute.

The licence is granted for a reasonable period and on reasonable terms, with compulsory-licence provisions applied by analogy under paragraph 8. This should not be described as an automatic free licence, permanent immunity or an unrestricted right to sublicense. The actual permission and terms remain matters to be established through the statutory framework.

Paragraph 9 excludes the benefit of paragraphs 6 and 7 where the former owner or licensee acted in bad faith when beginning use or making serious preparations. Preserve the licence date, production chronology and Office notification. Those records answer different conditions and should not be compressed into a single assertion that the operator was already trading.

Distinguish ownership recovery from invalidity and earlier-use protection

Article 138 includes an entitlement-based invalidity ground with restricted standing, but invalidity and transfer serve different objectives. The patent invalidity guide explains the challenge to the right’s validity. A claimant seeking control of a commercially useful patent should not assume that asking to invalidate it produces the same result as obtaining its transfer.

Article 87’s earlier-use protection is also different from the limited licence-request route following ownership correction. Our prior-use guide addresses good-faith Turkish use or preparations at the relevant application date. Article 111 instead focuses on the ownership-change chronology and the specific position of the former owner or pre-action licensee.

The practical file should end with a clear choice of remedy, a complete deadline table and a supported ownership chain. A register entry, a warning letter and a final judgment are not interchangeable documents. Protect confidential research through lawful channels and ensure that the requested court and Office steps correspond to the particular asset and legal position claimed.

Official legal sources

This guide explains Industrial Property Code No. 6769, particularly Articles 109–112 and 138. Official legislation links are available in the TÜRKPATENT legislation directory. The Turkish text governs; this article is an English explanation, not an official translation or an ownership determination.

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