Mickey Mouse, Barbie, NASDAQ, Donald Duck, Valentino, SwissStar, amazon.com, are but a few of worldwide well-known trademarks. However, as the current Turkish practice considers only what is filed at the Turkish Commercial Court as “well-known” marks, marks of international fame are not protected under Turkey’s Trademark Law No. 555.
Turkey is a member to the Paris Convention and adopts Article 6bis which stipulates that a member country shall reject or cancel the registration and prohibit the use of a trademark that is liable to create confusion with another trademark already well-known and reputed in that member country even if not registered locally. Despite this stipulation, oppositions and cases presented on the basis of reputation are being rejected.
In fact, the definition of a well-known trademark may vary from a culture to another; yet, a mark is considered well known in a certain country when the citizens of that country are familiar with that mark even if such familiarity is through publicizing the mark in other countries. Ignoring the fact that marks like “Barbie” or “Donald Duck” must be known to all social classes has encouraged infringers to build fortunes out of unfair competition and prejudice to the interests of the public.
Until there are proper domestic regulations that address this problem in Turkey, the only action that can be taken by owners of well-known marks is to work on precautionary grounds and have their marks registered in Turkey even if they are reputed all over the world.