China joins the Hague System for Industrial Designs

 China has joined the Hague System for the International Registration of Industrial Designs. Accession will come into effect on May 5, 2022, and from this date, China will begin accepting applications for design registration under the system.

With China's accession, Chinese designers will be able to use the International Design Registration System to protect and promote their designs abroad. China filed a total of 795,504 design applications in 2020. This represents approximately 55% of applications filed worldwide.

On the other hand, foreign designers will be able to register their designs in China under the Hague System.

The Hague System facilitates the application procedures for design owners by eliminating the need to apply individually in each country or region to obtain design registration. Users of the system have the opportunity to request design registration In more than 90 countries of their choice with a single application. In addition, applications can be made online and application fees can be paid at once.

China also joined the WIPO's Marrakech Treaty on February 5, 2022. The Treaty of Marrakech, administered by WIPO, facilitates the production and international transfer of specially adapted books for the blind or visually impaired. It does this by establishing a number of limitations and exceptions to traditional copyright law.

The Treaty of Marrakech was adopted on 27 June 2013 and entered into force on 30 September 2016. It is the rapidly growing agreement of WIPO and currently includes 84 contracting parties before China takes effect on May 5, 2022.

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Turkish inventions will be exhibited in Geneva

Turkish Patent and Trademark Office is participating in the 46th International Exhibition of  Inventions of Geneva in Switzerland, from April 11th to April 15th, 2018, with three domestic inventors and their inventions. Various 1000 inventions of more than 700 participants from 45 countries will be introduced during the exhibition organized by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

The exhibition, attracting the attention of industrialists, investors, businessmen in search of innovation, allows the inventors to introduce their inventions and have financial support for commercializing their inventions. In the exhibition, outstanding inventions are awarded in various categories.

In the last year's exhibition, Turkish inventors:

• İlter DENİZOĞLU won "Gold" prize and Special Award for Medical Science of Gulian University of Islamic Republic of Iran  and the special award of China's Delegation,
• Gül Bahar BAŞIM, Sabri Orçun ORHAN, Zeynep ÖZDEMİR, Özkan BEBEK won "Gold" prize and the special award of Ministry of Scientific Research and Innovation of Romania,
• Ezgi YELEKOĞLU & Altuğ TOPRAK won the "Silver" prize and the special award of China's Delegation.

The following inventions will be exhibited in the boot of the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office during the exhibition of this year.

"Settable Pot" by Arife Sare AYDIN, Inventor

This invention relates to a pot containing a stirrer which is connected to the lid to allow the meal to be stirred at a constant speed while being cooked, and controlled by means of a setting mechanism. Said pot comprises a stirrer which performs the mixing process, a setting mechanism providing movement to the said stirrer, and a lid on which the said components are carried.

"Desktop thermoelectric ice machine" by Raşit AHISKA, Inventor

This invention is an easily portable desktop thermoelectric ice machine which produces ice in a very short time by converting electrical energy from the electric network or battery directly into the cold by means of a thermoelectric module consisting of N and P-type semiconductors without using intermediates. In the designed device, a small amount of clean water is automatically or manually placed in the high-heat-conducting ice container (cooler compartment) to produce ice within 1-3 minutes in a needed amount for cooling a person's drink, and the device is operated with a battery or mains voltage. 30-50 gr of ice, which is the average amount of ice needed to cool a drink in a beverage at one time, is herein produced in 1-3 minutes and can be served automatically or manually. The ice container of the device is cooled by a specially designed single thermoelectric module. Special battery or special SMPS power supply is used to operate the module. A special temperature control circuit is used to keep the device's electricity consumption to a minimum. A heat transfer system having a specially designed heat pipe is used to keep the heating surface of the module at ambient temperature.

"Road safety system for uneven roads" by Adnan Kal and Uğur Kal, Inventors

This invention relates to a road safety system for uneven roads, by which the vehicles exceeding the speed limit are trembled and drawn to the level of the speed limit.

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An overview of IP filings in Turkey based on “World Intellectual Property Report – 2017” Published By WIPO

World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has recently published world-wide IP trends analysis based on filings and registrations in 2016. The analysis covers the figures of the national and regional filings and international filings of WIPO .

The report indicates that IP filings upward substantively, the increase rate of trade marks applications and design applications are 16.4% and 10.4% respectively and patent applications 8.4%. The source of most of the growths comes from China as expected always.

In the foreword of the report, it is reported that global patent filings grew by 8.3% and global trademark filing activity by 13.5% – making for seven years of straight increases. Following an 8% decline in 2014 and 1% growth in 2015, industrial design filing activity rebounded strongly in 2016 with 8.3% growth.

We have summarized Turkey’s patent, trademark and design filing activity based on the same report as follows:

Trademarks

According to the report, total registered trademarks in force have reached 863,582 in Turkey. Turkish Patent and Trademark Office (TURKPATENT) registered 218,137 trademarks in 2016, which makes Turkey 4th in the world in trademark registrations. During the same period, SIPO, 270,810, EUIPO 330,379, USPTO 326,481 trademarks were registered.

Number of trademarks registered by TURKPATENT increased 60% between 2012 and 2016. During that period, share of local residents in the registered trademarks has increased to 84.1% from 76.7%.

According to the report of WIPO, 227,159 trademark applications were filed in 2016. With respect to the number of applications, Turkey ranked 9th in the world. China was ranked first with approximately 3,7 million trademark applications. USA and Japan follow China with trademarks applications of 550 thousand and 450 thousand respectively.

Applications for trademark registrations in 2016 came mostly from the sectors of agriculture, service, research and technology.

14.7 percent of trademark applications were made by non-residents abroad. Germany has ranked first among the non-residents filers with 7,993 applications in Turkey. The other primary countries became United States of America and Switzerland with 4,117 thousands and 2,955 thousands respectively.

The first three countries where domestic residents have applied for trademark registration outside Turkey are the European Union, Iran and the USA.

Designs

An estimated 963,100 applications were filed world-wide in 2016, representing annual growth of 10.4%. Increased filings in China accounted for 90% of the total growth in 2016.

TURKPATENT received 46,305 design applications in 2016 and ranked 5th country among other Offices. The State Intellectual Property Office of China (SIPO) became the first with total design applications of 650,344. SIPO was followed by the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO; 104,522), the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO; 69,120), and the offices of Germany (56,188) and Turkey (46,305).

14.9 percent of design applications (6,894) were made by non-residents. Germany has ranked first among the non-residents filers with 7,993 applications in Turkey. The other primary countries became United States of America and Switzerland with 4,117 thousands and 2,955 thousands respectively. TURKPATENT registered total 48,687 designs in 2016, 7,719 of which pertain to non-residents.

Patents

WIPO reported that in 2016, for the first time, more than 3 million patent applications were filed worldwide in a single year, up 8.3% from 2015. According to the report, driving such strong growth was an exceptional number of filings in China, which received about 236,600 or 98% of the additional filings. The next largest contributor was the United States of America (U.S.) with around 16,200 additional filings.

Contrary to good position in trademark and design filings, Turkey is lagging behind in the patent filings and registrations, although substantive growths have been observed in the last 5 years.

TURKPATENT is ranked 23rd in the patent filings among other Offices, receiving total 6,848 patent applications and granting total 1,764 patents in 2016. Non-residents filed 618 patent applications in 2016, whereas residents filed 6,230 applications in the same period. Total 155 patents were granted for non-residents in 2016, while total 1,609 patents were granted for the residents

In respect of the utility model applications, TURKPATENT takes 7th rank (3,534) among other Offices, whereas 1,4% has decreased compared to the previous year (2015).

Source: http://www.turkrenewals.com/news.html

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