Minister of Industry and Technology Mehmet Fatih Kacır announced an important patent support for SMEs. With the new regulation, a 75 percent discount will be applied to the application, research and examination report fees for the first applications of SMEs that will apply for a patent for the first time. For certain patent applications in the field of artificial intelligence, there will be a 50 percent discount on the urgent research report fee.
A change has been made in the 2026 fee schedule applied by the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office (TÜRKPATENT). With the regulation, discounts were provided on certain services in order to encourage SMEs that will apply for a patent for the first time and the patenting of innovations developed in the field of artificial intelligence.
The amendment to the communiqué on the subject came into force by being published in the Official Gazette dated 31 October 2026. The regulation titled "Communiqué on Amendments to the Communiqué on the Fee Tariff to be Applied by the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office in 2026 (BİK/TÜRKPATENT: 2026/1) (BİK/TÜRKPATENT: 2026/2)" entered into force on the date of its publication.
According to the communiqué, the first patent applications of legal entities that are in the SME business class and have an SME Qualification Certificate will benefit from the discounted tariff. Discount; It covers three items: application fee, research report fee and review report fee.
The second leg of the regulation focuses on inventions in the field of artificial intelligence. The fee for issuing an urgent search report for applications in the G06N class in the International Patent Classification (IPC) has been reduced by half. Class G06N, determined by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), covers "computational arrangements based on certain computational models". This class includes the basic technologies of artificial intelligence such as artificial neural networks, machine learning methods and knowledge-based systems.
The urgent search report quickly gives the applicant an idea about the patentability of his invention. In this way, startups working in the rapidly developing field of artificial intelligence can make investment and product development decisions at an earlier stage.
Minister Kacır used the following statements in his post on his social account:
"As the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office, we have implemented a significant discount in order to encourage the patenting of the inventions of our SMEs and the innovations developed in the field of artificial intelligence in our country. We provide a 75 percent discount on the application, research and examination report fees for the first patent applications of our SMEs who will apply for a patent for the first time. For patent applications in the field of artificial intelligence (G06N IPC class), we apply a 50 percent discount on the urgent research report preparation fee."
Kacır stated that they will continue to support entrepreneurs and said, "We will continue to support our entrepreneurs to turn innovative ideas into inventions and inventions into added value." made his assessment.
The costs of patent processes are seen as an important threshold, especially for small businesses that want to protect their first invention. The 75 percent discount lowers this threshold, paving the way for more SMEs to be included in the intellectual property system. The support provided to artificial intelligence applications will contribute to the faster protection of technologies developed in this field in Turkey.
