TRADEMARK SQUATTING
matter of fact, the filing and registration costs are always lower than the costs of filing a cancellation case against trademark squatters.
“EACH CASE NEEDS TO BE EVALUATED UNDER ITS OWN CONDITIONS AND THE PRIOR EFFECTIVE USE OF THE TRADEMARK IN QUESTION SHOULD BE PROVEN WITH STRONG EVIDENCE.”
Since many countries in the world apply first to file system in terms of trademark registration (including Turkey), trademark squatters are legally able to obtain the ownership of a trademark in a country. Te fact that the real owner has been using the trademark in his home country or elsewhere before the date of local filing does not automatically avoid bad faith filing. Te Turkish Patent Institute (TPI) does not require any evidence of the first use of
the trademark and does not investigate if the trademark was stolen or not.
Te registration system is quite easy to misuse by trademark squatters, so brand owners need to be proactive in protecting their trademarks in Turkey. However, in practice, brand owners are either not conscious that their national registration does not protect their trademarks in Turkey or postpone the registration because of the costs of filing. As a
It should be noted that a local registration obtained by a trademark squatter does not only avoid the registration in the name of the real owner, but also creates a serious legal obstacle against the manufacturing, importation, sale and marketing of the product bearing the registered trademark. Terefore the risk is worth considering.
Trademark squatters usually know that the legal process does not work fast and thus create a commercial pressure on the real owner to accept their price offer. Even though it is not frequent in practice, those who try to make the best of bad faith registrations do not hesitate to spend money to take precautionary injunction decisions from the court against the sale and importation of the products from the original brand.
Trademark squatters especially focus on rising US and European brands, which are not actively used or known in Turkey. Some others consider bad faith registration as a negotiation tool for obtaining the local distributorship of a foreign brand. Tese commercial attempts almost
96 World Intellectual Property Review Annual 2013
www.worldipreview.com
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