On Friday, 2 November 2018, the “Start-up Law | 101” seminar was held at the Future Center–YUTTO event tent on Yeditepe University’s 26 August Campus.
Vircon Legal co-founder Erdem Mümtaz Hacıpaşaoğlu spoke on idea and intellectual property, partnerships, incorporation, contracts, regulation, going abroad, investment and exit. See our Startup Law practice.
An idea is not protected; its form is
The first thing founders learn in this field is also the least intuitive: law does not protect ideas, it protects expressions, registrations and relationships. A business concept can be described to anyone without any right arising from it. What can be owned is the code and the design as an expression, the trademark once filed, a patent if the invention qualifies and has not been disclosed, and a confidentiality obligation that exists only because someone agreed to it.
That is why the sequence matters more than the effort. Filing the trademark before the launch is cheaper than a dispute after it; agreeing terms with a designer before the work is done avoids the work-for-hire question afterwards; and a prototype built with borrowed components inherits their licence terms, including open-source obligations. See Intellectual Property and the Startup Law in Türkiye guide.
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