Practice Areas: Trademarks

A trademark is all visible signs that distinguish products or services from others of the same kind or class in the market place.

This could be constituted as:

• The visible denominations and figures, sufficiently distinctive, capable of identifying the products to which applied, when compared with those of the same kind or class;
• Three dimensional forms;
• The commercial names and denominations or firm names, when the same do not fall
• The name of a natural person, if it is not confusingly similar to a registered mark or a previously published commercial name.

The Industrial Property Law establishes, with respect to marks, three different kinds of administrative proceedings: nullification, forfeiture and cancellation of a mark.

For Intellectual Property in Mexico there are only four types of Trademarks

Nominative (wordmark)
These are marks which allow a product or service to be identified by means of a word or series of words. Their importance is due to the fact that they can be distinguished phonetically and they must be sufficiently distinctive to differentiate among goods and services in the market to which they belong.

Non-nominative (Design)
These are figures which fulfill the function of a mark. This type of mark can be recognized visually but not phonetically. Its special feature is that it consist of symbols, designs, logos or any other figurative element which is distinctive.

Three-Dimensional
These are marks which protect three-dimensional objects such as containers, packaging, wrapping, or the form or presentation of products, provided that they are distinctive.

Combined
This is the combination of any of the three previous types of mark, for example, a word together with a design or a word combined with a three-dimensional symbol.

Also there are two types of protect the designs:

Commercial Nominative
Is the nomination which serve us to distinguish a Company from Industrial company, or Commercial as service Company. within the geographic situation where this established its clients.

Slogan
This is a distinctive phrase which serve us to make the difference between a product from others in the same area. The main characteristic of the “slogan” is that we can recognize the product without referring to the trademark.