Costinica Abogados

Costinica Abogados is a Mexico City intellectual property firm with eighteen years of practice protecting and enforcing trademarks, copyrights and patents for Mexican and international clients. The firm covers the full life cycle of an IP portfolio: clearance and prosecution before the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI) and the National Copyright Institute (INDAUTOR), maintenance, renewals and recordals, and contentious work before IMPI, the Specialised Chamber on Intellectual Property Matters and the federal courts.

The practice rests on a culture of prevention. Sound portfolio structure, disciplined docketing and early risk assessment are treated as the conditions that let a business grow without its rights becoming a liability. Deadlines in Mexican practice can extinguish rights that took years to secure, so prosecution and portfolio administration are run together, under one set of controls.

Trademark work is the centre of gravity: clearance and distinctiveness analysis, prosecution, oppositions and cancellation actions, portfolio management for companies with large national and international families of marks, and Madrid Protocol designations coordinated with home-office counsel. The firm is particularly experienced in recovering trademarks registered in bad faith, a recurring problem for foreign brands entering Mexico and for domestic companies whose distributors or former partners have filed first.

Copyright practice covers registration of original works, enforcement against unauthorised reproduction and public communication, and advice on moral and economic rights under the Federal Copyright Law, including software, audiovisual and literary content, and chain-of-title clean-up before licensing or litigation. The firm also advises on works created with artificial intelligence, where contractual language, human authorship and regulatory expectations have to be weighed against product plans.

Patent work runs from scoping and drafting through prosecution before IMPI, PCT coordination, office-action strategy, divisional filings and post-grant maintenance, supported by subject-matter experts who contribute technical analysis on inventions, utility models and related forms of protection.

Contentious proceedings are a substantial part of the practice. Disputes in Mexico rarely sit in a single forum: administrative invalidity actions, civil remedies, customs measures and, depending on the conduct, criminal exposure can run in parallel, with action available before IMPI, INDAUTOR, Customs and the Federal Prosecutor's Office. Each matter is built around an explicit theory of the case and a procedural sequence matched to the client's priorities on speed, confidentiality, reputational exposure and alignment with actions abroad.

Sector experience is concentrated in fashion and retail, franchising, food and beverage, automotive and consumer goods. The firm advised the largest fashion retailer in Mexico, and its founding partner has more than fourteen years in fashion law. Costinica Abogados belongs to ANADE, ASIPI, INTA, BMA, AMPPI and AIPPI, and works regularly with foreign counsel so that positions taken in Mexico support, rather than undermine, a client's global strategy.