Industrial Design
All kinds of products and the parts of product accompanying us and making our lives easier in every moment of our daily lives; the patterns and decorations putting a new face on our lives and addressing our aesthetic senses are industrial designs. The design can be expressed as a whole consisting of various elements and features which perceived by all or a part of a product or human senses such as its line, shape, form, color, texture, material.
A holder of right shall have the exclusive rights with the protection by being registered an industrial design.
With the design right, the third parties can not produce these designs, not put on market, not sell, not import, not require make to a contract, not use for commercial purposes or not possess for these purposes without the permission of the owner of the design right.
– The designs which do not have a new and distinctive qualification
– The characteristics with regard to the designer and the design in the performance of the technical function and elements which do not leave any freedom of choice.
– The designs contrary to public order or public morality
– The designs are beyond the scope of protection which produced in the compulsory shapes and dimensions to be able to mount or connect mechanically the product designed or implemented the design to another product.
The sole authorized organization to give the registration of industrial design in Turkey is Turkish Patent Institute.
The term of protection of registered designs is 5 years from the date of application. The term of protection can be extended up to 25 years by renovating of the registration in a period of five years
Industrial design registration provides a national protection for the applicants. In other words, the design protection applies only within the borders of the country where the design is registered. Thus, if the protection of the design is requested in more than one country, the most common way to be followed is to apply separately for design registration to the offices in countries where the protection is requested. However, in this period, to apply separately to the office of each country ; it has given rise to the problems such as the different application procedures and the use of different language and the systems have been established which provide taking the design under protection in more than one country with a single application. In our country, for this purpose, The Hague Agreement related to the international registration of industrial designs was put into effect on 1 January 2005.
The fines and imprisonment applied to those notified as the owner of the design right in a manner inconsistent with the reality or those eliminating without authorization a mark stating which there is the design protection on the goods and the packaging, or those indicating unjustly as the holder of the design application and the owner of the design right.
In cases of violating the rights of the design, it is decided to imprisonment and fine, also to the closure of businesses but not less than one year and to being banned from trading over the same period
Under the purchasing decisions of products being close to each other in terms of quality, providing the same benefit and offering the same promises to the customer, the aesthetic characteristics of the goods produced are important. Therefore the consumer has began to select an attractive one among the same quality goods. Manufacturing firms, in this case, have been improving a specific design pattern according to customer segments they address. This effort creates a second competitive environment beyond the quality. At this time, the factors such as form, color and volume of the product have started to gain importance, so the competition has aesthetically been in question. In addition the designs move the elements such as functionality, ease of use, ergonomics, as well as an aesthetic contribution to our lives.