Obstacles and solutions encountered during the commercialization process of inventions in higher education institutions in Turkey within the framework of intellectual industrial property rights

The main aim of this study was in Turkey examining the obstacles encountered during the commercialization of the invention implemented in higher education institutions, to offer solutions for the removal of these obstacles. For this purpose, the study has been presented within the scope of the commercialization processes and applications of inventios in higher education institutions in our country and in the world by examining the conceptual framework on the intellectual property rights and the statistical data obtained. As a result of the research, the obstacles in the subject area have been identified and it is seen that most of these obstacles are due to deficiencies and uncertainties in the legal regulations in our country. Although there are innovations in the legislation of our country in the light of international agreements on intellectual and industrial property rights, it has been determined that this could not be reflected in all of the relevant national legislation and there are contradictions between different laws, as well as deficiencies and uncertainties in the same law. Identified deficiencies and uncertainties can be summarized as follows: obligation to implement the public tender process in accordance with the provisions of the State Tender Law No. 2886, In accordance with the Regulation on Foundation Higher Education Institutions, article 28, there is a regulation that foundation universities cannot earn income from an activity other than teaching activities, uncertainty about the source and budget item for the patent application costs of inventions made in state universities, if the person who has made an invention and received a patent in a higher education institution transfers to another higher education institution, there is no regulation in the Industrial Property Law about the principles that the higher education institution where the invention is made against the inventor regarding the right of the patent, uncertainty in case higher education institutions do not have rights on the invention and want to commercialize it by keeping it as a trade secret as a strategy, higher education institutions do not find a regulation on the process to be applied for inventions made as a result of taking part in a public project, uncertainty about the principles of distribution of right ownership in higher education institutions when an invention is made jointly by more than one person and contradiction between the regulations in Industrial Property Law article 113, Industrial Property Law article 121 and Regulation on Employee Inventions, Inventions Made in Higher Education Institutions and Inventions in Publicly Supported Projects article 28, which contain provisions about service inventions realized in higher education institutions. As a result of the study, it was concluded that it would be beneficial to introduce additional legal regulations by the legislator in order to resolve the obstacles and uncertainties and to introduce explanatory regulations on issues involving uncertainty, and solution proposals were presented in order to remove some obstacles. Keywords: Entrepreneurship, invention, industrial property rights, commercialization, intellectual property rights