IP, Technology & Data Protection

Intellectual property in Türkiye is governed by the Industrial Property Law (Law No. 6769) and, for copyright, by Law No. 5846. The system is first-to-file and it is enforced. For foreign businesses that means one thing above all: rights used in Türkiye but registered only abroad are exposed, and the exposure usually becomes visible at the worst moment — when a distributor relationship ends, or when someone else has already registered the mark.

Data protection runs on a separate track. KVKK (Law No. 6698) is modelled on European principles but is not identical to the GDPR, and the differences that matter in practice concern lawful bases, registration obligations and cross-border transfers. A company that assumes GDPR compliance carries over automatically will usually find the transfer mechanism is the gap.

The recurring questions are practical: how to secure a mark before entering the market, how to structure licensing so royalties survive tax scrutiny, what to do about counterfeit goods entering through customs, and how to move personal data to a parent company abroad lawfully.

The guides below cover registration and enforcement, trade secrets, KVKK compliance and cross-border transfers. For the contractual side see corporate and commercial law.