Varieties which are new, distinct, uniform and stable are protected by breeders’ right provided that other legal requirements are fulfilled

Novelty:

The variety shall be deemed to be new if, at the date of filing of the application for a breeder's right, propagating or harvested material of the variety has not been sold or otherwise disposed of to public, by or with the consent of the breeder, for purposes of using exploitation of the variety, at home where the application has been filed earlier than one year before that date, and abroad earlier than four years or, in the case of trees or of vines, earlier than six years before the said date.
Following cases shall not affect the consideration of variety as new:

• Sales or statements that can be considered, against the holder of the right, as misuse of right,
• Sales or statements that are within the scope of a transfer contract of breeder’s right.
• Acts, on behalf of the holder, under a propagating contract of material, provided that the breeder preserves the right on propagating material and material is not exploited for production of any other variety.
• Field or laboratory trials carried out, under a contract, in order to determine the characteristics of the variety or acts related with small size product processing trials.
• Acts arising from legal procedures for biological security or from the obligations such as entering tradable varieties in the official catalogue.
• Sales or disposal to the public, for consumption and without defining the variety concerned, of residual products resulting from production of variety or of harvested material of subproduct nature, or materials resulting as the consequence of acts under paragraph last three articles above.
• earlier than 1 year before the application date for domestic applications and
• earlier than 4 years before the application date, 6 years for trees and vine for foreign applications.

Distinctness:

If it is clearly distinguishable from any other variety whose existence is a matter of common knowledge on the date of application or on the date of priority right.

• It should have been made public in Turkey or in the world before the application date.
• It should have been published by the Institute as a registered design, and that the protection period has not expired at the application date of the design with which it shall be compared.

In the assessment of the individual character, the emphasis of evaluation shall be on the common features of the designs and the degree of freedom of the designer in developing the design shall also be taken into consideration.

Uniformity:

A variety shall be deemed to be uniform if it is sufficiently uniform in its relevant characteristics, except those possible variations that are subject to propagation method used.

Stability:

A variety shall be deemed to be stable if its relevant characteristics remain unchanged during the repeated propagation or at the end of particular propagation cycles.