Analysis of intellectual property performance of companies that operate in Turkey through Design Turkey Industrial Award winners

Today's globalized environment generated a strong global competition. To be competitive; information, innovation and design is accepted to be essential by researchers, business people, public authorities and decision makers. Design is seen at the core of innovation and intellectual property is seen as the basis of innovation and the key to understand global innovation. The aim of this research is to analyze the intellectual property performance of Turkish companies in our globalized world where innovation and design is essential. To carry out this analysis, at first a literature review is conducted and then a sample group is chosen, a data set is prepared and the data is analyzed. The first aim of the literature review was to understand intellectual property, the formal and informal protection methods, and integrated intellectual property strategy. Findings of the study showed that an integrated intellectual property strategy is needed and to achieve an understanding of the intellectual property performance of Turkish companies the data set should include all formal protection methods. Because of this reason, formal protection methods of trademark and design registration, and patent and utility model certificate volumes of the sample group members are added to the data set. Existence of integrated intellectual property understanding is also added to the data set. During the literature review, understanding the position of Turkey regarding intellectual property is also aimed. For that reason, Turkey's intellectual property history is explained, the international treaties are summarized, the treaties Turkey had become a party are mentioned and the trademark, design and patent application numbers of Turkey is compared with other countries. A paper and a thesis that question the quality of the applications in Turkey is also included to the literature review. Like most of the institutes, Turkish Patent Institute does not examine the novelty and individual character of designs if there are no oppositions. Also, it is not mandatory to have a search report for utility model applications. Additionally, a patent with no examination can also be obtained for a shorter period. These facts showed that a sample group whose designs has already examined with some criteria like the unexamined criteria of design registration and utility model, patent certificate is needed for a better analysis. Otherwise, the application numbers would be misleading and won't show the innovative capability, and therefore analyzing the intellectual property performance would lose its significance. Recently, Turkish Parliament enacted a new IP Law, it will be in force soon and the above-mentioned problems will be solved because novelty examination will be conducted for designs, utility model will have search reports and unexamined patents will no longer be available. But for the data obtained that was not the case. After understanding Turkey's position on intellectual property, a literature review is performed to understand the definition of design, industrial design and how to protect industrial designs. In the literature review formal and informal protection methods are studied, and all the protectable elements of designs are decomposed and reviewed. After the literature review, it is decided to complete the analysis on the performance of intellectual property based on the formal protection data obtained from the Turkish Patent Institute to have concrete results. Considering the reasons mentions above, the sample group is chosen from the winners of Design Turkey Industrial Design Awards organized in 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2014. Design Turkey Industrial Design Awards is a design evaluation system organized with the collaboration of the Republic of Turkey Ministry of Economics, the Turkish Exporters Assembly and the Industrial Designers' Society of Turkey, within the framework of Turquality program of the Republic of Turkey Ministry of Economics. The award system aims to reveal the benefits of good design to the society and industry in Turkey, by rewarding good product design that considers user needs and provides added value and competitive advantage. The award system has the criteria of novelty and distinctiveness. These criteria match up with the criteria of intellectual property protection criteria. These facts played a major role when selecting the sample group from the winners of this award system. In the second part of the thesis, the data of the Design Turkey Industrial Design Awards winners is analyzed. To prepare the data set, all the brands that won a price in 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014 are listed and the right owners are determined. The right owners are designated by finding the trademark and design registrations related to the brands and designs that received awards. After designating the right owners, the intellectual property portfolios are determined from the Turkish Patent Institute database, and lastly the registrations and certificates are listed, organized, analyzed and interpreted. The analysis was only focusing on the companies that operate in Turkey. And this way, the result of the analysis would not be able to connect to the global environment. Because of that reason, it is aimed to find an analysis of intellectual property performance done in another country or countries. The joint report of European Patent Office (EPO) and the Office of Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM), which is published in 2013, is founded and added to the analysis. The report was about the intellectual property rights intensive industries and their contribution to economic performance and employment in the European Union. In this report, intellectual property rights intensive industries are coded, listed, and their contribution to the European economy is revealed. The results were impressive. The results showed that 88% of European Union imports and 90% of European Union exports consist of products of intellectual property rights intensive industries. The codes that are determined for the intellectual property rights intensive industries of the report are matched with the sample group of this thesis and the data is added to the data set. This way, it became possible to interpret the intellectual property performance of the sample group in accordance with European Union companies. After analyzing the intellectual property volumes of the companies of the sample group, the results show that they are more likely to choose to protect the products that they won the award system. The sample group consists of 118 companies. These companies' portfolio volumes decrease from trademarks to designs then to patents and utility models. Highest volume is achieved on trademark registrations, and then a slightly lower volume is achieved on design registrations. But a sharp fall is observed when it comes to utility models and patents. The low volumes achieved in utility model and patent numbers indicate that awareness with respect to protecting inventions should be raised. Generally, the companies' portfolios are weak on utility models and patents. It may be assumed that this is usual because their areas of activities do not require inventing. But when we analyze with respect to the joint report of EPO and OHIM, from 45.7% of these companies it is expected to see intensive intellectual property activity resulting from their areas of activities. But 22% of them does not have any alive or dead certificate of utility models or patents. From the rest of them only 26.6 % shines out with respect to the others, and the rest either have certificates that are not alive anymore, or have a very little volume. 91.5 % of the companies of the sample group obtained trademark registrations and 79.66 % obtained design registrations. This positive scene is not enough considering the criteria of the Design Turkey Industrial Design Awards. It is expected from the winners of the awards to obtain registrations for all their novel and distinctive designs. It is expected also that they protect their trademarks as they are all active in the market with their products. This picture shows that the awareness on protecting their novel designs and trademarks is not sufficient even the percentages are high. 66% of the sample group companies are active in the areas of intellectual property that match with the EPO and OHIM report. But only half of them can be considered intensive when compared to the other companies of the sample group in their categories. Also, only 25.4% of them can considered to be intensive when their volumes are evaluated with respect to the EPO and OHIM report. The analyzed companies do not have similar portfolio volumes and in almost every category some companies shine out. 19% of the companies that are in the Turquality program of the Republic of Turkey Ministry of Economics are the ones that shine out most particularly. 59% of the companies, which mention that they are exporting their products, are also ahead of other companies in their categories with respect to their portfolio volumes with some exceptions. The perception of the companies on creating integrated intellectual property portfolio is found to be more than 50%. This positive seen turned out to be not so positive when compared with the EPO and OHIM report intensive industries data because only 29% of the companies can considered to be intensive. In the forthcoming years, it would be substantive to monitor the performance of the companies and see if there are any increases in their portfolio volumes. During the analysis, a data is noticed by chance. Finding that data was not planned but it is found to be important regarding the awareness of intellectual property and therefore added to the research. The names of the designers declared to the award system and to the Turkish Patent Institute while registering were not matching for 28 of the 118 companies. In the Decree Law No 554 Pertaining to the Protection of Industrial Designs, it is mentioned as; "the transfer and renunciation of this right shall be without legal effect." This data showed that 23.7% of the companies declared the names of the designers wrong or partially wrong, and this fact shows they need to raise their awareness of moral rights.