On 5 August 2026, recent TÜRKPATENT decisions and practice updates signalled a tougher approach to filings that copy foreign brands. Even where an overseas mark has not yet been registered or used in Türkiye, an application reproducing its distinctive wording, design or other features as an “identical copy” may support an inference of bad faith when the duplication cannot reasonably be explained as coincidence. In such cases, the foreign rights holder may no longer need direct evidence of the applicant’s subjective intention for the filing to be rejected on bad-faith grounds.
The practical shift matters most to brands that entered the Turkish market late or have not yet filed locally. It moves part of the evidentiary focus from proving what the applicant intended to showing how improbable the copying is as an independent creation, potentially making opposition and invalidation arguments easier to build. The boundary between an identical copy and ordinary similarity will still depend on subsequent decisions, so the development should not be read as an automatic bad-faith finding for every close mark. Early filing remains the safer strategy, backed by records of brand creation, overseas use, publicity and any circumstances showing how a filer could have encountered the original brand.
