Protecting Startup Inventions in Turkey Before You Fundraise

If you are an early-stage founder, the safest time to protect your invention is before you pitch it to investors, not after. Protecting startup inventions in Turkey starts with keeping the idea confidential and securing at least a priority date at the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office (TÜRKPATENT) before any public demo, press release or funding round. Do that first, and you walk into due diligence with an asset the round can be valued on, rather than a liability a sharp investor will flag.

This guide covers what to do before you file, how patents and utility models differ, how to take protection abroad, and the mistakes that quietly sink early rounds. The principles apply whether you are building hardware, a chemical process or a software product.

Why Timing Matters: Protect First, Pitch Second

A patent protects an invention only if the invention was still novel on the day you filed. Novelty is destroyed by public disclosure, and a pitch deck emailed without a confidentiality agreement, a demo at a startup event, or a feature announcement on social media can all count as disclosure. Once the idea is public and unprotected, the right to a patent may be gone in most countries, and a competitor is free to copy it.

Turkey does offer a cushion. Under the Industrial Property Code No. 6769, there is a grace period of twelve months before the filing date during which a disclosure that came from the inventor does not destroy novelty. That grace period is a safety net, not a strategy. It does not exist in every country, so a disclosure that is forgiven in Turkey can still bar protection in Europe or China. Treat the invention as a secret until a filing is on record.

Securing IP before raising investment also changes the conversation with investors. When the core technology is already filed and the ownership is clean, the asset sits inside the company you are raising into, and the valuation discussion is about the business rather than about an unresolved risk the deal has to price in.

What Investors Check During IP Due Diligence

Investors assess whether the startup actually owns and controls the technology it is built on. Before a term sheet becomes a wire transfer, most serious investors run intellectual property due diligence, and a few recurring questions decide whether the round proceeds smoothly:

• Who owns the invention? Every founder, employee and freelancer who contributed must have assigned their rights to the company in writing.
• Is anything filed? A priority application, even a single national filing, shows the asset exists and has a date.
• Has the invention been disclosed? Investors want to know whether novelty is still intact or already spent.
• Is there freedom to operate? Does the product risk infringing someone else’s existing patent?

Gaps here rarely kill a deal outright, but they lower the valuation and slow everything down while you scramble to paper over ownership after the fact. It is far cheaper to get it right before the pitch. Our guide to IP strategy for startups in Turkey walks through how to build the wider portfolio once the first filing is in place.

First Steps to Protecting Startup Inventions in Turkey

Before you file anything, lock down confidentiality and ownership, because those two things are hard to fix later. The first steps cost little and protect the most.

Keep the invention confidential

Use a written non-disclosure agreement before you share technical detail with anyone outside the founding team: contractors, potential partners, and yes, investors who ask for the deep technical version. Keep a dated record of what the invention is and when it was conceived. Avoid public demos and detailed posts until a filing exists.

Make sure the company owns the rights

In Turkey, an invention made by an employee within the scope of their work can belong to the employer under the employee-invention rules of Code No. 6769, but the position for co-founders, advisors and outside developers depends entirely on what the contract says. Get a written assignment of invention rights from everyone who touches the technology. A missing signature from a developer who left two years ago is a classic diligence problem.

Decide what is patentable and what should stay secret

Not every invention should be patented, and not everything can be. For a sense of the threshold, see what makes a patentable invention in Turkey: broadly, it must be new, involve an inventive step and be capable of industrial application. For the practical groundwork before a filing, our note on how to protect an invention before filing a patent covers the confidentiality and documentation steps in more detail.

Patent, Utility Model, or Trade Secret?

The right form of protection depends on how novel the invention is, how fast your market moves, and how long you need the exclusivity to last. A patent gives the strongest and longest protection but takes longer and costs more to obtain. A utility model is faster and cheaper and suits incremental or shorter-life inventions. A trade secret costs nothing to file but disappears the moment the secret leaks or a competitor reaches the same result independently.

Note that chemical substances, pharmaceuticals and biotechnological inventions cannot be protected by a utility model in Turkey, so for those a patent is the route. Figures and timeframes here are as of the time this article is written; because official fees and rules change, confirm the current position with a trademark and patent attorney before you decide.

Filing a Patent Application at TÜRKPATENT

Filing a patent application at TÜRKPATENT follows a defined sequence, and understanding it helps you plan the timing around your raise. In outline, the process runs as follows:

1. Prior-art search. Check existing patents and publications so you do not spend money on something already known. This is also where freedom-to-operate concerns surface.
2. Draft the application. Prepare the description, the claims that define the scope of protection, any drawings and an abstract. The claims are the heart of the document and reward careful drafting.
3. File and secure the priority date. The filing date is your priority date, the line that decides novelty. Everything after this can still be adjusted; this date cannot.
4. Request the search and examination. TÜRKPATENT issues a search report, and the application is examined before grant.
5. Publication and grant. The application is published, and once the examination is satisfied the patent is granted.

In our practice before TÜRKPATENT, applications that start from a clean prior-art search and well-drafted claims move through the process with far fewer objections. Foreign founders do not need to be in Turkey to file; a registered trademark and patent attorney (marka ve patent vekili) can act as the authorised representative. You can read the office’s own materials at TÜRKPATENT, and the governing law is the Industrial Property Code No. 6769.

Taking Protection Abroad Before You Raise

If your market or your investors are international, your first Turkish filing can anchor protection in other countries too. Under the Paris Convention, the date of your first filing gives you a priority right for twelve months: file abroad within that window and those later applications are treated as if filed on your original date. This is why patent protection for startups in Turkey often begins with a single national filing that preserves options everywhere.

To keep many countries open at once without filing in each immediately, the Patent Cooperation Treaty route lets you file a single international application that holds your place in most of the world. That international filing typically buys you thirty or thirty-one months from your priority date before you have to commit to individual countries. For a fuller explanation, see our guide to the PCT international patent application and how it protects an invention worldwide. The treaty itself is administered by WIPO. For a startup, this means you can raise a round now and decide on expensive national filings later, once the funding and the market are clearer.

Mistakes That Can Sink a Round

A few avoidable errors do most of the damage, and they tend to surface at the worst moment, during diligence. Watch for these:

• Disclosing before filing. A public demo, a conference talk or a press release before any filing can destroy novelty outside Turkey’s grace period.
• Unclear ownership. Co-founders or contractors who never assigned their rights can hold a veto over the company’s core asset.
• Relying only on secrecy for something easy to reverse-engineer. If a competitor can take the product apart and copy it, a trade secret gives you nothing.
• Waiting too long. Someone else filing the same invention first takes priority, regardless of who invented it earlier.
• Weak claims. A granted patent with narrow or poorly drafted claims is easy to design around and adds little value in diligence.

If any of these describe your situation, acting now is usually faster and cheaper than fixing it under the pressure of due diligence. Court enforcement, if an infringement ever reaches that stage, sits with Turkey’s specialised IP courts and is outside the services Leo Patent provides; our work is on the registration and advisory side that keeps you out of those disputes in the first place. Protecting startup inventions in Turkey is mostly a question of sequence: lock down confidentiality, fix ownership on paper, then file before you talk. If you are heading into a raise, send us a short confidential summary of your technology and your fundraising timeline, and we will tell you what to file first and in what order.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do startups protect inventions before fundraising?

Startups protect inventions before fundraising by keeping the technology confidential, securing written assignments of rights from everyone who contributed, and filing at least a priority patent or utility model application before any public disclosure. That sequence gives investors a clean, owned asset to value during due diligence.

Can I show my invention to investors before I file?

You can, but only under a written non-disclosure agreement, and it is safer to have a filing on record first. A disclosure without protection can destroy novelty in countries that have no grace period, which can bar patent protection abroad even if Turkey would forgive it.

What is the difference between a patent and a utility model in Turkey?

A patent requires an inventive step and lasts up to twenty years, while a utility model requires only novelty and industrial application and lasts up to ten years. The utility model is usually faster and cheaper, but it cannot protect chemical, pharmaceutical or biotechnological inventions.

Do foreign founders need to be in Turkey to file a patent?

No. Foreign founders can file through a registered trademark and patent attorney (marka ve patent vekili) who acts as their authorised representative before TÜRKPATENT, so there is no need to travel or set up a local office simply to file.

How much does it cost to protect a startup invention?

Costs vary with the type of right, the complexity of the invention and whether you seek protection abroad, so a fixed figure would be misleading. As of the time this article is written, official fees and professional charges change periodically, and the current position should be confirmed with a trademark and patent attorney.

Should software be protected by a patent or by copyright?

It depends on what is novel. Software can involve patentable technical features, while the code itself is protected by copyright from the moment it is written, so many startups use both. The right mix is best assessed case by case before a filing decision.

What happens if someone files the same invention before me?

The earlier filing generally takes priority, because patent systems reward the first to file rather than the first to invent. This is why securing a filing date early, before fundraising and before public disclosure, matters so much for a startup.

About Leo Patent

Leo Patent is an Istanbul-based trademark and patent attorney firm (marka ve patent vekili) serving foreign and Turkish clients across Türkiye. The firm is registered before the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office (TÜRKPATENT) and the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce (registration no. 308755-5), and handles trademark, patent, design and other intellectual property registrations in Türkiye and internationally.

This article was prepared under the supervision of Burak Ünal, general manager of Leo Patent, registered trademark attorney (TÜRKPATENT reg. no. 2900) and registered patent attorney (TÜRKPATENT reg. no. 1677). He holds a Business Management degree from Boğaziçi University (2016) and an MSc in Finance from the London School of Economics, which he attended as a Chevening Scholar; he is also a congress member of Galatasaray Sports Club. He advises clients in Turkish, English, French and Chinese. In Türkiye, trademark and patent attorneys are a regulated profession separate from lawyers: Burak Ünal is not a lawyer, and Leo Patent does not provide lawyer services or court representation.

Need help with a trademark or patent in Türkiye? Contact Leo Patent for a consultation: www.leopatent.com · [email protected] · WhatsApp +90 532 689 48 18.

Disclaimer: Leo Patent is a trademark and patent attorney firm (marka ve patent vekili) and is not a law firm; it does not provide lawyer services, legal advice or court representation. This article is for general informational purposes only and you are strongly advised to consult a qualified professional to evaluate your personal situation. No liability is accepted that may arise from the use of the information in this article.