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CategoryTrademark
Published26 August 2026
Authors
Uğurcan TekinPartner
Alican TekinPartner

The Quietest Way to Lose a Right: Renewal Calendars and Bulletin Watch

Registration certificates get framed and hung on office walls. What keeps the right alive is not the certificate but the calendar behind it — renewal windows, annuity due dates, bulletin cycles and opposition periods, each running independently and none of them waiting. This article takes that calendar apart piece by piece: where each period starts running, and what missing it actually costs.

Trademark Renewal: Six Plus Six

Under Article 23 of the Industrial Property Code No. 6769, a registered trademark is protected for ten years from the filing date and renewed in ten-year terms. The renewal request must be filed within the six months preceding the expiry of the term, with proof of payment submitted in the same window. Missing that window does not end the matter: renewal remains possible for six months after expiry, against an additional fee.

The size of that additional fee tells its own story. Under the 2026 tariff, an ordinary renewal covering up to two classes costs 8,730 Turkish lira; renewal of a mark whose term has expired costs 15,420. The per-class supplement rises from 750 to 1,310 lira. Being a day late costs, in effect, a second renewal fee — and the money is the smaller part of the problem.

One under-used provision belongs in this picture. Article 23(3) permits renewal for only part of the goods and services covered. Where classes have accumulated over the years that the business no longer uses, the renewal window is the natural moment to prune them — reducing the fee and, at the same time, the exposure to non-use revocation that unused classes invite. There is no better occasion for a portfolio review than a renewal that has to be handled anyway.

There is no single calendar: every right, every country and every international system keeps its own clock.

A Lapsed Mark Is Not Quite Abandoned — But Almost

One provision softens the consequences of a missed renewal. Under Article 6(8), an application filed within two years of the expiry of a mark that lapsed for non-renewal, for an identical or similar sign covering identical or similar goods, is refused on the opposition of the former proprietor — provided the former proprietor has used the mark during those two years.

Three limits should temper any comfort taken from that. It is a relative ground: the Office does not apply it of its own motion, so the former proprietor must oppose. Opposing requires seeing the application, which means the bulletin watch must continue after the mark has lapsed. And the use condition means a proprietor who has genuinely abandoned the mark cannot invoke it. Article 6(8) is not an insurance policy; it is at best a two-year cushion, after which the sign is open to anyone.

Designs and Patents: Same Logic, Different Clocks

For designs, Article 69 builds the same structure: protection runs five years from filing, renewable in five-year terms up to twenty-five; the request is filed in the six months before expiry, with a further six months available against an additional fee. Under the 2026 tariff a single design renews for 6,340 lira in time and 11,120 late. A design that is not renewed simply expires on the day its term ends.

Patents have no renewal; they have an annual due date instead. Under Article 101, annuities fall due on the anniversary of the filing date from the end of the second year onward. An unpaid annuity can be paid with a surcharge within six months; after that the right lapses. The statute leaves one last door open — a restoration fee paid within two months of the notification of lapse revives the right as of the payment date — but Article 101(5) preserves whatever rights third parties acquired in good faith in the interval. The patent that comes back is not always the patent that left.

“Waiting for the Office to remind you is not portfolio administration. The reminder may or may not arrive; the deadline runs either way.”

The Office Reminds — Without Taking Responsibility

Since January 2023 TÜRKPATENT has sent automated e-mail notifications for trademark and design renewals, to the holder and the recorded representative, one month before the deadline. It is a welcome service, and the Office's own announcement states its limit plainly: the notifications do not constitute official service and are informational only. A reminder that never arrives stops no deadline and excuses no loss. The statute points the same way — Article 23 frames renewal as the proprietor's act, and no provision places a duty to remind on the Office.

There is a register dimension to this. Notifications go to the address and the representative recorded in the register. Where a change of corporate name was never recorded, an assignment never entered, or a representative relationship never updated, the reminder lands in the inbox of someone who no longer has anything to do with the file. Register hygiene and deadline management look like separate tasks; they are links in the same chain.

The Watch: Only Antidote to a Two-Month Period

The other face of the calendar is other people's applications. The Official Trademark Bulletin appears twice a month, and under Article 18 the period for opposing a published application is two months from publication. The Office does not notify the owners of similar marks; the period runs whether anyone is looking or not. A conflicting application missed in those two months leaves only the slower and costlier routes — Board proceedings, invalidity actions, administrative revocation.

That is why a bulletin watch is not an optional extra for anyone holding a portfolio. TÜRKPATENT's online search tools are open to all; a watch — systematically screening every bulletin, assessing similarity and reporting in time to act — is a distinct service run through representatives. Frequency is not a detail either: a watch that reports monthly has, on average, already spent half of the two-month period before the report arrives.

Across Borders, the Clocks Multiply

In an international portfolio every system keeps its own calendar, and none of them consults the others. A Madrid registration renews every ten years, centrally at WIPO, counted from the international registration date, with a six-month grace period at a surcharge of half the basic fee. A Hague design registration renews at WIPO in five-year terms. European patent annuities are paid to the EPO until grant and to each national office afterwards — for European patents validated in Türkiye, to TÜRKPATENT under the ordinary Article 101 regime.

The most frequently missed calendar is the American one. A United States registration obtained through Madrid survives only if declarations of use are filed with the USPTO between the fifth and sixth years from the US registration date and in the final year of each ten-year period — and those declarations do not replace the ten-year renewal at WIPO. Two authorities keep two clocks on the same right, and missing either makes the other's good order irrelevant.

The Audit: Looking in the Mirror Once a Year

The only way to know all these calendars are actually working is to review the portfolio as a whole at regular intervals. WIPO's intellectual property audit framework lists the same headings — asset inventory, scope and gap analysis, currency of register entries, use status. Brought down to Turkish practice, it comes to three questions.

  • Is the register current — assignments, changes of name and address, representative records all entered, so that reminders and official notices reach the right hands?
  • Is a use-evidence archive being kept — invoices, catalogues, advertising records filed as they arise? That archive serves not only a possible proof-of-use request, but the administrative revocations running before TÜRKPATENT since 10 January 2024 and the use condition in the two-year opposition right after lapse.
  • Does the coverage match reality — do the registered classes track actual activity, are classes or countries missing, and can unused classes be pruned at the next renewal?

The natural moment for that review is the renewal window itself. The file has to be opened anyway; opening it only to pay a fee, when the same effort would carry a full portfolio check, is the smaller half of the work done at the same cost.

Sources

Related practice areaIndustrial Property Law→

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