Signs which may serve as trademarks in Turkish and European Union law

Signs which may serve as trademarks are regulated in te frame of Turkish law in the 4th article of Turkish Industrial Property Act and according to European Union law in the 4th article of the Regulation (EU) 2017/1001 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 June 2017 on the European Union trade mark and the 3rd article of the Directive (EU) 2015/2436 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 December 2015 to approximate the laws of the Member States relating to trademarks. All three legislations have recently been amended and the signs which may serve as trademarks were redefined for both legal systems. This work studies the amendments in the Turkish Industrial Property Act and the Regulation (EU) 2017/1001 on the European Union Trademark which both came into force in 2017. It also analyses the effects of the elimination of the graphical representation requirement which has been substituted by the requirement of being represented in the register as one of the most important amendments. In the light of this amendment, the signs which may serve as trademarks were evaluated under close scrutiny according to Turkish and European Union law, with regard to Implementing Orders on both sides. Also, the question of how taste, smell and tactile signs will be affected by the new requirement of being represented in the register is discussed in detail, as the suitability of these items as a trademarks and the possibility of their representability employing graphics has since been a disputed issue. In this work, it has also been attempted to provide the reader with a detailed introduction of multimedia, pattern, hologram and position marks which are already known and currently studied in the European Union Trademark Law.