Turkey’s TUSEB Regulated Support Programs for R&D Activities in Health, Science and Technology

Health Institutes of Turkey (“TUSEB”) has recently issued the Regulation on Project Support Programs (“Regulation”) promulgated on the Official Gazette on October 22, 2020  setting the principles and procedures regarding the application and monitoring processes of R&D projects in  health, science, and technology.

It addresses the support programs of projects that provide in-kind and / or cash in which the strategic R&D projects are exempted.

Application, Evaluation and Monitoring Process

The Regulation requires TUSEB to announce the periods and terms for application on yearly basis subject to procedures set forth for application purposes.  

Upon the evaluation and acceptance of supporting the project, the contract to be signed is a sample contract with the clauses referring to purpose, scope, activities, and term of the project, intellectual property rights and the amount of support.

The Regulation brings out certain obligations to project coordinators/managers such as drafting progress reports to be submitted for six to twelve months as determined in the contract and keeping TUSEB informed regarding scientific, technic, financial and administrative progress of the project. In case of a failure, the President of TUSEB is entitled to suspend the execution of project.

IP Ownership

The Regulation further stipulates that, TUSEB owns all kinds of intellectual property rights on any intellectual product including the work, invention, industrial design, or technical information developed or created during the course or after the completion of unless otherwise agreed in the contract. Therefore, owners of the intellectual property rights may be granted with shares, not exceeding fifty percent of the net income to be obtained as a result of economic evaluation of TUSEB's intellectual property rights.

It is also allowed in projects involving a private institution that intellectual property ownership belongs to the legal entity in proportion to be determined by the project team of the relevant private legal entity.

Ezgi Ceren Aydoğmuş