Legal content and insights
Practical articles on trademarks, patents, copyright and corporate law in Mexico, written by the people who file the applications.
Favikon placed Elia Sampayo Meza second in Mexico and third across the Spanish-speaking world among creators publishing on privacy and intellectual property law.
Lawgic ranks every attorney in Mexico by the number of trademark applications filed in a year. Elia Sampayo Meza came in at #224 nationally.
Mexican consumers turned "Little Caesars" into "Liru Sisa". Instead of fighting the nickname, the company filed it as a trademark. That is a lesson in how brand value is actually created.
The Beckham family filings before the EUIPO show how a personal name becomes a financial asset, and why owning the registration matters more than being the person named.
Collectors noticed the flags in the World Cup sticker album looked wrong. It was not a mistake at the printing press. It was intellectual property law doing its job.
A performer can lose control of the name he built. It happens more easily than most people think, and the register is what decides it.
The semaglutide patent has expired in India, China and Brazil while remaining in force in Mexico. Patents are territorial, and that single fact drives global pricing.
A multinational filed a viral meme as a trademark before IMPI. It was probably the smartest thing its legal team did that year, and it is available to any business.
Winning the award made headlines. Holding more than fifty US trademark registrations is what turns a career into a business that survives the next album.
A personal note from the founder of Molsam Advisory on where the firm approach to clients comes from.
A costumed character from the streets of Mexico City became an unofficial mascot of the 2026 World Cup. The commercial value arrived long before anyone filed a trademark.
The official tournament song is not just music. It is a multimillion-dollar stack of copyright, neighbouring rights and synchronisation licenses that the public never sees.
The sequel is not a film about clothes. It is a manual on how fashion houses turn design into protected, licensable, enforceable property.
The tournament is on and every business wants a piece of it. Here is the line between legitimate marketing and ambush that gets you a cease-and-desist.
Official sponsors paid billions, and several brands that paid nothing got more attention. That gap is the whole argument for taking trademark protection seriously.
A stadium carries a sponsor name for twenty years, and then a tournament arrives and covers it up. The contract, not fairness, decides who wins.
The second day of the AIPPI Trilateral IP Cup in Mexico City covered the pressures reshaping industrial property across North America.
The character went viral, and then a trademark application appeared that the creator did not file. This is the most common way creators lose their own work.
One of the most recognized venues in world football changed its name. Behind it sits a naming-rights deal worth a great deal of money and built entirely on trademark law.
The AIPPI Trilateral IP Cup brought together intellectual property specialists from Mexico, the United States and Canada for a working session in Mexico City.
A large client chose a boutique founded last year over an established practice. The reason had nothing to do with price.
It looks like a contradiction. It may be one of the smartest brand-equity plays available, and it depends entirely on how the trademark portfolio is structured.
It is not the marketing. Every successful co-branding deal rests on a license agreement that answers a short list of questions before the product exists.
Three different rights, three different offices, three different terms. Choosing the wrong one is the most expensive mistake in intellectual property.
The entity you incorporate determines your personal liability, how you can bring in investors and how you are taxed. Changing it later is possible but costly.
Template contracts downloaded from the internet fail in exactly the moments they were supposed to protect you. Here is what they usually leave out.
Wordmark, lettermark, monogram, emblem, symbol, mascot, combination. The type you choose changes how you should file and how much protection you get.
Technologies we use daily were invented by women who often received neither the credit nor the revenue. The reason, repeatedly, was a failure at the paperwork stage.
Artificial intelligence has made plagiarism faster and cheaper than ever. The legal exposure sits with whoever publishes the image, not with the tool.
It started as viral content. Today it is a registered trademark generating revenue. The step between those two states is smaller than most creators assume.
Four out of every ten marks that reach our desk cannot be registered as they stand. Knowing which category yours falls into before filing saves the official fee.
A footballer left a life-changing message unread for nine months. The parallel with unregistered trademarks is uncomfortably exact.
Most owners believe a registration lasts ten years. It does, but only if you file the declaration of actual use in a three-month window after the third anniversary.
The Regulations to the Federal Law for the Protection of Industrial Property are in effect. They change procedure, timing and formalities for anyone with a filing before IMPI.
A football is a small object carrying four different intellectual property rights at once. "Trionda" is a useful map of how a physical product gets protected.
An athlete turns a personal habit into a product line. The legal question is whether the name and the look were protected before the market noticed.
A tea chain launched with a four-petal flower motif. The resemblance to a famous monogram cost it 1.5 million dollars.
When AI is used to clone your identity, complaining on social media achieves nothing. Registered rights are what let you force a takedown.
Behind every registered trademark there is a lot of planning, coffee and a pace that does not stop. Here is what the work actually looks like.
An eight-metre trophy in Rockefeller Plaza looked like brilliant marketing. It was, but the part that made it possible was signed months earlier.
Building a law firm from nothing has been one of the hardest and most rewarding things Elia Sampayo has done. Five things the first year taught her.
Building a business takes years. Losing the right to its name takes one application filed by someone else.
A pink bag makes you think of one department store; a turquoise box of another. Colour can be a trademark in Mexico, but the requirements are demanding.
When the first Mickey Mouse short entered the public domain, many assumed the character was free for anyone to use. It was not, and the reason is a lesson in strategy.
A trademark does not give you exclusivity over a word across all of Mexico. It gives you exclusivity within the commercial class you registered in. Here is what that means.
ReRoot, the international platform connecting professionals with global clients, added Elia Sampayo Meza to its directory of specialists.
What a legal due diligence actually reviews before an acquisition closes, and why the same questions apply to small companies.
Paying for creative work does not transfer the rights to it. What Mexican companies should document before it matters.
A trademark protects the sign, not how your product works. Which figure covers each thing, and why order matters.
How a pharmacy mascot became protectable across coffee shops, theme parks and plush toys, and what the law actually says about famous marks.
Trademarks are territorial. What to register, and in which order, before your product leaves Mexico.
Building an audience around a name containing another company’s mark means building on an asset that will never be yours.
Trademark, copyright, office action, cease and desist: the basic IP vocabulary with its correct equivalent in the Mexican system.
Why a general concept cannot be owned, what can be protected instead, and the sequencing mistake that destroys novelty.
The conversations that are not in the file: grief over a name, translating an office action, and saying no before someone spends.
Confidentiality, liquidated damages and jurisdiction: the clauses that decide whether you solve a problem or inherit it.
Moral and economic rights are not the same. What that means for the logo, the software and the photos your business uses.
Payment remunerates a service; it does not transfer copyright. What the assignment should say and how to fix it if you never signed one.
The right of priority under the Paris Convention gives you six months to extend a filing abroad keeping your original date.
Opposition, bad faith, prior trade name, good-faith prior user and nullity: the routes that exist, and why registering first is cheaper.
Clients compare clarity, not credentials. And if you are going to build visibility, build it on a name that is yours.
Article 172 is broader than most companies realise, and the April 2026 reform added position, movement and multimedia marks.
When trademarks and companies sit in a relative’s name, everything works until it does not. What to check, and how to correct it.
Share classes, amended by-laws and a shareholders’ agreement — plus the intangible-asset check that comes before any capital increase.
No contacts, no network. What that taught me, and why it is the same advice I give to anyone building a business.
The rookie mistake when expanding abroad, the worst case (your own distributor owns the mark) and the tools that prevent it.
Free, no commitment
Four out of every ten marks that reach us cannot be registered as they stand. Send us the name and we come back with a straight answer on whether it has an obvious problem. No cost, no commitment. Need the full analysis, signed and in writing? That is the registrability opinion: USD 49 per mark and class, credited against your fees if you then file with us.
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