 Our area of practice covers registration of all copyrightable works such as literature, science works, music works, fine art works, computer programs, database registration…
The Copyright Law No. 5846 of 1951 amended by Law No. 5101 on 3 December 2004 is the main legislation concerning copyright protection in Turkey. The administrative procedure for copyright formalities is implemented by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, specifically by the General Directorate of Copyright and Cinematography. However, copyright enforcement is effected by the judicial authorities.
In order the protection to be effective, the work of art should be original and include personal efforts, innovation and new arrangement and the work enjoying copyright protection should bear the characteristics and particulars of its author.
The copyright protection supplies economic and moral rights to the owners. Economic rights give the author the right to reproduce, adapt, communicate, distribute, broadcast or otherwise dispose of the work. Moral rights allow the author to represent the work to the public, give a name to the work, put his or her name on the work and prohibit modification of the work.
Copyrights for Intellectual and Artistic Works
What Is An Artistic Work?
According to Law on Intellectual and Artistic Works (FSEK), an artistic work is any intellectual and artistic work that bears the specialty of owner thereof and that is considered as a scientific, literature, music, fine arts or cinema work. In order to consider an intellectual and artistic work as a work of art, it must have following characteristics:
a. to bear specialty of owner thereof,
b. to be shaped,
c. to apply any type of works of art as stated within Law,
d. to be resulting from an intellectual effort.
Today, Registration and Entry actions for Intellectual and Artistic Works are carried out in two manners:
- Obligatory Entry Registration
Musical and cinema works and computer games must be entered and registered before being introduced to the market.
For cinema and musical works; producers, who perform the first detection of films, and phonogram producers, who perform the first detection of sounds, without aiming to establish a right for claim, make the entry and registration of their cinema and musical works in order to prevent breach of their rights, to enable proof facility of owners of those rights and to enable follow up of authorization rights for benefit related to financial rights.
- Optional Entry Registration
Scientific and literature works, Fine art works, Musical Works, Computer Software and databases may optionally be entered and registered.
Since the registration at Ministry of Culture and Tourism is being carried out pursuant to owner's statement, the ones who submit false and deceptive statements during entry and who provide false statement on material and moral rights of others, shall be subject to legal and penal sanctions stated within Law No. 5846 |
