Patents and designs
Patents and designs
The shape, pattern or ornamentation of a product can be protected independently of its function.
An industrial design registration protects the appearance of a product: its shape, its lines, its ornamentation, its texture. It protects the look independently of the function, which is exactly why it is useful. Two products can work identically and still be distinguished by a protected design.
For furniture, packaging, consumer goods, footwear, bottles, housings and jewellery this is often the strongest and cheapest protection available, and it is the one most frequently skipped.
Five years from the filing date, renewable for successive periods of the same length up to a maximum of twenty-five years, subject to the corresponding fees (article 78 of the Mexican Industrial Property Law). Registrations and renewals are published in the Gazette.
That renewal structure is a trap for the inattentive: unlike a trademark, the first deadline arrives in five years, not ten, and there is no use declaration reminding anyone that the file exists.
A design has to be new. Launching the product, putting it in a catalogue or showing it at a fair before filing can defeat that, the same way disclosure defeats a patent. The sequence is: file, then launch.
These overlap and the overlap is where value is lost. A bottle can be an industrial design, and its distinctive shape may in time also function as a trademark, which does not expire while it is used and renewed. The right answer is usually a combination, decided at the start rather than retrofitted.
We assess which figure fits the product, prepare the drawings and the filing, prosecute it before IMPI, and calendar the five-year renewals. Where the shape is commercially central we also advise on whether it can be taken to trademark, which is the protection that can last indefinitely.
Foreign companies entering the Mexican market, Mexican businesses expanding abroad, and foreign law firms that need local counsel in Mexico.
Trademark work is quoted as a flat fee per mark and per class, with official IMPI fees included. Other matters are quoted per file after an initial review, which is free.
Trademarks
We file your mark before IMPI with the correct Nice classification and handle prosecution end to end, from the application to the registration certificate.
Trademarks
Your mark is only protected where it is registered. We coordinate Madrid Protocol designations and direct national filings from your Mexican base.
Trademarks
A registration lasts ten years and then it must be renewed or it lapses. We file within the statutory window and remind you well in advance.
NO COMMITMENT
Every case is different. Tell us briefly what you need and we will send you a proposal with scope and fees within one business day.
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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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