The exclusive protection will come into question when the trademark, design, patent, and other industrial property matters are registered. Whereas the protection of names, titles, signs, and various promotional instruments, that do not register as a trademark and as other industrial property rights and which are used in the commercial area, will be protected within unfair competition provisions. These issues are regulated in 6102 numbered Turkish Commercial Law.
Unfair competition can be defined as the deceptive act or abuse of economic competition through all sorts of methods, contrary to goodwill.
Fast development and changing nature of economic circumstances and sales, promotional methods in line with this fact constantly gave rise to various unfair competition cases and on this account, the lawmaker had to line up unfair competition cases, encountered frequently in implementation, through sampling upon making a definition of unfair competition.
The concept of unfair competition is arranged within the framework of Article 54 in Turkish Commercial Law. In the first paragraph, the objective of this law is defined as the honest and incorrupt competition that has to be ensured in favor of all participants. In the second paragraph, deceptive attitudes, which are contrary to integrity rules, which are performed in other ways, and which affect relationships between competitors or suppliers and customers, or commercial practices are regarded as unfair and unlawful.
As is evident, the use of a comprehensive word like all participants (the expression of all participants account for the renowned trio of competition law, which comprises economy, consumer, and public) in the Commercial Law prevented competition rules from being attributed to solely relationships between competitors.
KIRCI Law Office (KIRCI Avukatlık Bürosu) renders a wide range of services regarding unfair competition in Turkey from the representation of our clients before Commerical Courts and Intellectual Property Courts to representation before the Regional Court of Appeals, and Court of Cassation in Turkey.