The Intellectual Property and Industrial Rights in the National Technology Initiative: Recent Educational Improvements in Türkiye

Technological developments raise the importance of intellectual and intangible production day by day. It is critical for the future of countries to adapting this change, as the share of human production has decreased and automation and artificial intelligence has extended. Countries make a great effort to claim rights for innovative products and to increase their competitiveness. Intellectual property rights (IPR) are the key for ownership of products, economic development and promoting innovative technologies. Therefore, most developed and developing economies prioritize the IPR and innovative production. While Türkiye was at a quite low level in IPR outputs at the beginning of the 2000s, a drastic performance increase was in the last 20 years. However, Türkiye’s performance is not adequate to reach the new IPR targets in the Turkish strategy documents including “11th Development Plan (2019-2023)” and “National Intellectual Property Rights Strategy Plan – Status Analysis Report”. The Ministry of National Education (MoNE) has recently prioritized IPR via raising the awareness of education stakeholders, establishing monitoring mechanisms and setting targets, establishing cooperation with other stakeholders, and increasing the production capacity of educational institutions. Additionally, teacher training on IPR was intensified, R&D centers were established, and the IPR was prioritized in large-scale projects. The improvements provided solid results in a short time, and the number of IPR applications and registrations from MoNE institutions increased tremendously. Consequently, the steps of the MoNE show that concrete results can be achieved in a short time with dedicated and holistic IPR improvements. It is recommended to expand these efforts and increase cooperation in order for Türkiye to achieve its recent targets in IPR.