A Turkish court on Tuesday banned all services of Periscope, a live video broadcasting platform owned by Twitter and popularly used by the opposition in Turkey, for violating the copyright of a Turkish company named Periskop.
The İstanbul Civil Court for Intellectual and Industrial Property Rights made its ruling on Periscope following a three-year-long trial.
In the final hearing on Tuesday, the lawyer representing Periskop İletişim ve Prodüksiyon said copyright violation by Periscope was obvious, alleging that they had been systematically violating his client’s branding rights.
The term “periscope” had been copyrighted by the local company at the Turkish Patent Institute.
Lawyers from Twitter, Apple and Google requested rejection of the case at the hearing, saying it was impossible for a company like Twitter, operating in the US, to be aware of the existence of the same brand name in Turkey.
The lawyers also said Periscope and the Turkish Periskop company operate in totally different areas.
The court ruled for banning access from Turkey to the domain periscope.tv and to the Twitter account “periscopeco.”
Periscope services are currently available under the name Scope TR and Twitter handle @scopetr in Turkey.
Turkey has temporarily blocked social media sites including Facebook and Twitter in the past, usually following protests or terrorist attacks.
Turkey has also blocked all access inside the country to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia since April 2017.