Criteria Update Regarding Confusion Analysis Between Trademarks in Mexico

It has been approximately a decade since the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMP) adopted very strict criteria when assessing the likelihood of confusion between trade marks. As a result of this strict approach IMPI's trade mark examiners had some criteria that were troublesome, especially when marks including designs or associated to a concept were compared to each other.

These troublesome criteria were to consider designs as secondary elements usually deemed insufficient to grant distinctiveness to the marks. As a result the examiners tended to focus their confusion analysis on the phonetic elements of the mark.

Unfortunately, these criteria were able to stand for a long time, because IMPI's resolutions were reviewed by the IP Specialised Court of the Federal Court of Administrative Matters (TFJA), which for a long time supported IMPI's criteria by confirming their resolutions as correctly issued.