The only authorized institution for that case is the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office. To protect a design by licensing, there are two basic criteria: One of them is a novelty and the other is distinctiveness. Both criteria are interdependent just like two sides of a coin.
• Novelty is defined as working on a previously unknown or known solution, presenting a different product with different comments, approaches, and detail analysis. While determining novelty, it is checked whether the related design has been declared to the public by the right holder or others. Since it is considered in an absolute way, if a similar design is declared to the public anywhere across the world, it means that the novelty feature of the design in question has disappeared. In novelty assessment, the common feature is considered primarily and the difference in small details is not considered novelty.
• Distinctiveness, if a general impression of a design on an informed user is different from the impression of any design declared to the public before the application for a registered design or priority date on the very same user, that design is regarded as it fulfills the distinctive feature criterion. The difference we looking for here is a very distinctive one. An informed user is neither an ordinary user nor an expert. An informed user may be briefly defined as a person who has information and experience about the indicated design and used that product before. For example, a housewife is an informed user of a sofa suite design.