A trademark assignment rests on two pillars: the parties sign a written assignment agreement approved by a notary, and the assignment is recorded in the TÜRKPATENT register (TÜRKPATENT is Turkey's patent and trademark office). Notary approval is a condition of validity — an agreement without it does not transfer the trademark. Recordal in the register costs TRY 5,960 under the 2026 fee schedule and makes the assignment enforceable against third parties.
The process in brief:
- Preliminary review: the trademark's status in the register (pledges, attachments, licences, term of protection) is checked.
- Agreement: an assignment agreement covering scope, price and warranty provisions is drafted.
- Notary approval: the agreement is approved by a notary — the precondition for validity.
- Recordal: recordal of the assignment is requested through EPATS (TÜRKPATENT's online filing system) and the fee is paid.
- Publication: the assignment is entered in the register and published in the Official Trademark Bulletin; in a partial assignment a new file is opened.
We summarised the fact that a trademark is a transferable asset in Can a Trademark Be Assigned?; this guide sets out the transaction itself step by step. How long the process takes is the subject of a separate article, and the cost items are covered in Trademark Assignment Fees in Turkey 2026.
What Is a Trademark Assignment?
A trademark assignment is the transfer, by agreement, of all the rights conferred by a registered trademark (or, in a partial assignment, some of them) to another natural or legal person. With the assignment, the owner of the trademark changes: the new owner takes over the rights to use the trademark, to allow others to use it, to renew it and to sue for infringement; the former owner's rights in the trademark come to an end.
An assignment needs to be distinguished from two transactions it is often confused with. A licence grants permission to use without transferring ownership; the trademark stays with its owner. Franchising is a broader business-model agreement that also includes permission to use the trademark. If you are looking for a revenue model rather than a permanent change of hands, you should read our Trademark Licence Agreement guide.
A trademark is an asset independent of the business it belongs to: the trademark alone can be sold without the company being transferred. In the opposite case — the transfer of a business or company — the agreement should state expressly whether the trademark passes too; assignments built on an "everything included" assumption produce trademarks forgotten in the register under the former owner's name.
The Legal Requirements for a Trademark Assignment
Written agreement and notary approval: a condition of validity
Article 148 of the Industrial Property Code (Law No. 6769) requires an assignment to be in writing and adds something more important: the validity of the assignment agreement depends on its approval by a notary. This is not a matter of making proof easier; it is a constitutive requirement. Issuing an invoice, agreeing by email, or even a protocol signed by both parties that never went to a notary does not transfer ownership of the trademark — even if the price has been paid.
In practice, the agreement is prepared by the parties and the signing/approval takes place before the notary. Where a company is a party, it should also be confirmed, through its signature circular and authorisation documents, that the agreement was signed by a person authorised to make the assignment.
Recordal in the register: a shield against third parties
A notarised agreement makes the assignment valid between the parties; however, rights arising from an assignment that has not been recorded in the register cannot be asserted against third parties acting in good faith. An assignee without a recordal is unprotected against anyone who deals in the trademark in reliance on the register. For two exceptional types of mark the bar is even higher: the assignment of a certification mark or a collective mark becomes valid only upon recordal in the register.
Recordal also matters greatly in practical terms: only the owner shown in the register can request renewal, notices from the Office are sent to the address in the register, and the active party in opposition and court proceedings is the owner of record. Not recording the assignment means owning the trademark you have bought on paper only.
The Trademark Assignment Process Step by Step
1. Preliminary review: obtain the trademark's register record
Before the assignment, a current extract from the register for the trademark file should be examined: when does the term of protection expire, which classes does the scope include, and is there a pledge, attachment, interim injunction or recorded licence on it? Encumbrances recorded in the register pass to the assignee together with the trademark. On the buyer's side the second question is the price: for a realistic value of the trademark, see the methods of trademark valuation.
2. Draft the assignment agreement
The agreement should, at a minimum, make the following clear: the parties' identity or trade name details, the trademark's registration number and scope, whether the assignment is full or partial, the price and payment schedule, and the parties' representations and warranties. A detailed list of clauses follows in the next section.
3. Obtain notary approval
The agreement is approved by a notary. If this step is skipped, or put off with "we'll do it later", there is legally no assignment at all; the fact that payment has been made does not change the result.
4. Apply to TÜRKPATENT to record the assignment
Recordal of the assignment is requested through EPATS at the request of either party; the notarised assignment agreement (or a notarised document evidencing the assignment) is attached to the file, and the recordal fee — TRY 5,960 under the 2026 fee schedule — is paid. Parties resident abroad must conduct the transaction through a trademark attorney entered in the register of attorneys.
5. Recordal in the register and publication in the Bulletin
If the Office finds the documents in order, it enters the assignment in the register and publishes it in the Bulletin. In a full assignment, the file continues in the new owner's name. In a partial assignment, a new trademark file is created for the assigned goods/services; from that moment the two records live independently, each with its own renewal calendar.
What the Assignment Agreement Must Cover
- Scope: The registration numbers of the assigned trademark(s); in a partial assignment, the classes and the list of goods/services item by item.
- Price and payment schedule: Lump sum or instalments, the order of payment and recordal, and default provisions.
- The rest of the portfolio: What happens to any other registrations, applications or domain names of the assignor bearing the same wording — otherwise two separate owners of the same sign remain in the market.
- Existing licences and encumbrances: The status of licences, pledges and attachments recorded in the register; the assignor's warranty that the "register is clean".
- Representations and warranties: That the trademark is valid, that there is no claim that it infringes third-party rights, and that it carries no risk of revocation under the use requirement.
- Post-assignment non-use covenant: That the assignor will not use the same or a similar sign and will not file for it again.
- Costs: Which party will bear the notary fee and the recordal fee.
Partial Assignment: Splitting a Trademark to Assign It
A trademark can be assigned for some of the goods or services covered by its registration. For example, a trademark registered for both clothing (Class 25) and cosmetics (Class 3) can be assigned for the cosmetics class only; the clothing side stays with the assignor.
A partial assignment is a flexible tool, but it carries two risks together. The first is confusion in the market: if the same sign is used by two different owners in neighbouring sectors, consumers cannot tell the commercial origin apart; for this reason, a partial assignment makes sense between groups of goods/services that do not overlap. The second is the administrative burden: every split file means separate renewal, separate monitoring and a separate burden of proving use. For other ways of sharing the same trademark with more than one person, see Can a Trademark Be Assigned to Multiple Owners?
Special Cases
Merger, demerger and change of legal form
Where the company that owns the trademark merges with another company, undergoes a demerger or changes its legal form, the trademark passes to the new legal entity as a result of that structural transaction; recordal in the register is based on trade registry documents rather than an assignment agreement and is charged under a separate item in the fee schedule. It should also be stressed that a change of trade name is not an assignment — the owner of the trademark stays the same and only its name changes; we deal with this distinction in Does a Company Name Change Affect a Trademark Registration?
Transfer by inheritance
When the owner of a trademark dies, the trademark passes to the heirs together with the estate; recordal in the register is based on the certificate of inheritance. We describe this process, which works differently from a contractual assignment, in detail in Can a Trademark Be Inherited?
5 Common Mistakes in Trademark Assignments
- Settling for a private agreement. Without notary approval the assignment is invalid; this is the most expensive mistake.
- Postponing recordal. Every month that passes without recordal increases the risk from good-faith third parties and the chance of a double assignment; if the renewal period arrives while the assignment is unrecorded, the transaction stalls.
- Taking over a trademark without checking the register entries. A pledged or licensed trademark can end up costing more than its price.
- Forgetting the rest of the portfolio. If similar registrations and domain names left with the assignor are not dealt with in the agreement, the buyer holds the trademark but the seller keeps the market.
- Setting the price without a valuation. A negotiation conducted without pricing in the trademark's age, reputation, scope and revocation risks is a shot in the dark for both parties.
After the Assignment: The Assignee's Checklist
For the assignee, completion of the recordal is not the finish line but the starting point. Actually taking possession of the trademark also involves the following steps:
- Take over the renewal calendar. The term of protection is not extended by the assignment; the former owner's calendar is now yours. Calculate the expiry date from the filing date according to the rule in our renewal guide and set a reminder.
- Understand that you have taken on the use requirement. The five-year use period is not reset by the assignment; if the trademark you acquired has gone unused for years, you have also acquired the risk of revocation. Archive evidence of use (invoices, packaging, advertising) from the start of your own period of ownership.
- Start Bulletin monitoring. The right to oppose similar applications now belongs to you; a trademark that is not monitored cannot exercise that right.
- Gather the connected assets. Domain names, social media accounts, brand registrations on e-commerce platforms and any customs recordal do not pass automatically with the register; each must be transferred on its own platform.
- Update your agreements. References to the trademark in dealership, supply and licence agreements should be renewed on the basis of the new ownership.
Conclusion
A trademark assignment, when set up correctly, is a clear-cut transaction completed within a few weeks: without a notarised agreement there is no assignment, and without recordal the assignment is unprotected against the outside world. The real work of the process lies not on signing day but before it — obtaining the register record, settling the scope and the price, and drafting the agreement without gaps. Once those three are done, the rest is procedure.
Planning a trademark assignment?
Whether you are the assignor or the assignee, send us the trademark number via our contact page: we will report on its status in the register (encumbrances, entries, term of protection), structure the assignment agreement to meet the procedural requirements and complete the TÜRKPATENT recordal on your behalf. For the period after the assignment, our trademark watch service keeps renewal and Bulletin monitoring for your new portfolio in a single, orderly routine.