İç Mekan Tasarımlarının Fikri Mülkiyet Hakları Kapsamında "Eser" veya "Tasarım" Olarak Korunması

Abstract

In an increasingly competitive environment, it has become a necessity to legally protect intellectual and artistic products that emerge as a result of an intellectual effort. In Turkey, this protection is provided under the title of Intellectual Property Rights in the current system with the “Law No. 5846 on Intellectual and Artistic Works” and the “Law No. 6769 Industrial Property”. Interior designs, which is the outputs of the professional discipline of interior architecture, is also a product of the intellectual effort of the person in the context of the subject. This study focuses on an evaluation of whether the interior designs produced as a result of interior design activities are protected as “work” within the scope of the Intellectual and Artistic Works Law No. 5846 (FSEK) and as “design” within the scope of the Industrial Property Law No. 6769(SMK) in Turkey; the adequacy of the protection provided in the current system, the problems encountered in theory and practice, the sources of these problems and solution proposals. In this context, interviews were conducted with attorneys and design agents involved in registration application processes for interior designs, experts who take part in concrete events in legal processes, judges who serve or have served in intellectual and industrial property rights courts, experts from TURKPATENT Design Department, and General Directorate of Copyrights. The research was conducted with 32 participants within the framework of the qualitative research methods; and the data was collected through face-to-face interviews conducted through semi-structured questions. The obtained data was examined by content analysis procedures and findings were reached. The findings include the fact that the current system protects interior designs, but there are serious problems and suggestions for these problems. The most important finding within the scope of the study is the lack of information on interior design and its outputs; and relatedly some misinterpretations regarding the scope of FSEK and SMK. The study was concluded with evaluations and suggestions for the protecting interior designs within the scope of intellectual property rights in Turkey, based on the findings and the relevant literature.