Contracts for Work in Software Development

Turkish courts consistently treat bespoke software development as a contract for work. The hard questions come after that classification: when is delivery complete, what counts as acceptance, and can a non-working system still be said to benefit the client because a completion percentage looks high?

Defect and part-performance tests borrowed from construction sit uneasily with an invisible, shifting product. What usually decides the case is whether the obligations can be severed and whether the client has actually obtained a benefit. Handover of source code, going live and actual use point to different moments of delivery.

The law of obligations and copyright run on separate tracks. Payment and taking delivery do not pass the economic rights; without the written, right-by-right assignment that FSEK art. 52 requires, the client often holds no more than a simple licence. Access to source code is claimable only where the contract says so.

The study reads Court of Cassation and regional-court case law through those two layers, and sets out checkpoints on scope, acceptance, staged fees and the chain of rights. The full text is below.