Mexican trademark search
The official IMPI database is free and open. Here is what it will not tell you.
MARCANET is the public database of the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property. It holds the trademarks, trade names and commercial notices filed and registered in Mexico, and anyone can search it free of charge. It is the official source, it is in Spanish, and it is where every serious clearance search in Mexico begins.
You can search it yourself. This page is about what the results do not tell you, which is the part that costs money.
This is the big one. Three years after a registration is granted, its owner must declare real and effective use within a three-month window, and if they do not, it lapses by operation of law with no notice and no decision from IMPI (article 233 of the Mexican Industrial Property Law). The record can still appear. A surprising number of marks that look like obstacles are already dead.
An exact-word search finds the exact word. Mexican examination assesses similarity visually, phonetically and conceptually, and refuses marks that are confusingly similar to a prior one for the same or similar goods (article 173). The mark that stops you is often one you never searched for.
Protection reaches only the goods and services registered, and one application covers one class. A clean result in the class you guessed is meaningless if your products fall in another, and the mistake is expensive: adding or substituting goods later turns the application into a new filing with a new filing date (article 227).
Descriptive terms, generic terms and signs that have become the common way to refer to the goods are refused regardless of what the database shows. Four out of every ten marks that reach us cannot be registered as they stand.
We run the search in MARCANET across every Nice class that matters for your business, check each conflicting record for whether its use declaration was ever filed, assess similarity rather than identity, and give you a written answer with a rating per conflict.
If you are a US owner comparing systems, the differences between USPTO and Mexican practice are worth reading first. If you sell on Amazon Mexico, start here.
MARCANET is the public online database of the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI). It lets anyone look up trademarks, trade names and commercial notices filed or registered in Mexico, free of charge. It is the official source, and it is in Spanish.
Yes. MARCANET is free and open. What it will not do is interpret the results: it returns matches, not an opinion on whether your mark can be registered.
No. A search for the exact word misses confusingly similar marks, phonetic variants, and marks in neighboring Nice classes, all of which can block you under article 173 of the Mexican Industrial Property Law.
Not necessarily. The blocking registration may already have lapsed. Three years after the grant its owner had to declare real and effective use, and if they did not, it lapsed by operation of law (article 233). MARCANET will still show it.
Tell us the name and what you sell. We come back with a straight answer on whether it has an obvious problem, at no cost. If you need the full analysis signed and in writing, that is the registrability opinion at USD 49 plus 16% VAT per mark and class, credited against your fees if you then file with us.