In 1975, Lawyer Mahmut Alınak started his struggle for human rights as his compass, and today, our office continues to work with our team of experts in human rights and intellectual property law, as well as in areas that have more advanced practices worldwide, but where our clients are victimized due to the backwardness in legal practice. Our IT specialists and expert lawyers, led by Attorney Bişar Abdi Alınak, have made significant progress in the first instance judicial practice and investigation phase across the country in the field of IT crimes committed against individuals, where impunity has become the norm in recent years. We are achieving significant successes in preventing attacks on the personal rights of our clients, who are known for their contributions to the struggle for democracy and freedom and the free performance of art, targeted by both individual and organized attacks. Although confidence in the practice of law in the country has been declining over the years, we have achieved results that prove that defending human rights, especially the right to freedom of opinion and expression, the right to personality and the right to assembly and demonstration marches, with aggressive strategies, making every violation the subject of litigation without fear of possible political decisions, and directing the legal responsibility for these violations to the administration and the perpetrator of the crime, even in these fearful conditions, leads to gains.
Following the struggle for human rights, which our office has adopted as a compass and always keeps in focus, intellectual property law, which is one of the fastest developing branches of law worldwide, is one of the areas we focus on with our expert lawyers. Intellectual property law is one of the areas that has undergone the fastest changes in legislation and practice in recent years, due to the rapid changes in both technological developments and approaches to the share of the performer who has put forth his creative labor in the resulting work. In Turkey, the higher judiciary and courts of first instance largely follow the practices in the United States and Europe, albeit lagging behind. For this reason, we utilize the examples of these countries in order to end the ongoing violations of our clients' rights without further delay, and we ensure that the understanding of rights in this field is addressed not with a narrow interpretation of legislation, but with an equitable perspective necessitated by technological and professional developments.
In the United States of America, where a property right to the ability to create Works have been recognized for much longer than we have, even issues that have many judicial decisions to the contrary are now being discussed, agreements that were made before today's technological possibilities and rights perspectives were available are now the subject of the judiciary, and gains are being achieved. In 2023 alone, there are many IP disputes on the agenda of the US Supreme Court that have not yet been adjudicated. And even in cases where there is no precedent-setting decision yet, performers and their representatives are able to reach high-gain agreements. This understanding of rights is beginning to gain ground in Turkey, even though it lags years behind both in legislation and in the practice of the higher judiciary. With the 1995 enactment of the Law on Intellectual Property, many judicial decisions have recognized that it is not equitable to assume that artists, who have the right to dispose of the work, waive all rights to the work they perform in exchange for a one-time fee. Agreements made before this date are being discussed and scrutinized. We not only fight for our clients' loss of rights arising from agreements that contain unfair principles against them, but also mediate the results of the agreements they will make with the consultancy we offer to ensure that their creative efforts are rewarded.
B.A & Partners offers legal support to its clients with the same rights-based approach in addition to these focus areas. We believe that today's practices and legislation cannot draw the boundaries of legal practice and interpretation, and we do not hesitate to take initiatives at the level of Individual Application or the European Court of Human Rights if ordinary remedies or domestic remedies are not sufficient to protect the law of our clients. We ensure that the more advanced practices obtained as a result of these initiatives become established in the first instance jurisdiction through the processes we initiate immediately after achieving these results. B.A & Partners advocates for equitable settlements, fair trials and respect for personal rights for its clients in today's law and beyond.