The effect of ISO quality management system standards on industrial property rights in Turkey

Abstract

The aim of this study was to assess whether the systematical application of the following ISO quality management system standards: ISO 9001 (Quality Management System), ISO 22000 (Food Safety Management System), ISO 14001 (Environment Management System), ISO 13425 (Medical Device Quality Management System), ISO 27001 (Information Security Management System) and ISO 16949 (Automotive Quality Management System) have had an effect on the emergence of industrial property rights in Turkey. Information was collected about the number of ISO standard certification documents that Turkish organizations received in respect of these standards between the period of 2007 and 2013. For the same period, information about the number of granted patents, petty patents, trademarks and industrial designs in Turkey were also collected. the information was analyzed by year, industrial property right type and ISO standard. A Spearman correlation analysis was also conducted to determine the strength of association between the number of certification documents and the number of granted industrial property rights. the analysis showed that some of the ISO standards had either a positive or negative linear relationship with one or more of the granted industrial property right types. Although the total number of certification documents had decreased over the time period of the study, the number of granted industrial property rights in Turkey had increased over the same period indicating that the adoption of quality managment system standards may have led to an increase in national innovation in Turkey. This observation may help to improve innovation in other countries similar to Turkey. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.