Tabasco, Tajín, Valentina, Búfalo, Botanera, La Perrona and Cholula. Seven sauces that left Mexico and became familiar on supermarket shelves across much of the world. What rarely gets told is the part that made the journey possible without anyone copying them along the way.
Tabasco is sold in 195 countries and rests on more than 500 trademark registrations across every continent. Salsa Búfalo, created in 1933, crossed into the English-speaking market backed by more than 30 registrations in the United States and Central America.
Those are not vanity figures. They are the consequence of a rule that surprises almost everyone exporting for the first time.
Trademarks are territorial
A registration with IMPI protects you in Mexico. Only in Mexico. It has no effect whatsoever in the United States, Spain or Japan.
Which means a Mexican brand, impeccably registered here, can find that somebody else has already registered it in the country it wants to enter. And in most countries the right comes from registration, not from prior use elsewhere.
The correct order is to register before exporting, not after the product is already on the shelf.
Two routes out
- Country by country. A separate application before each national office, with local counsel and its own fees. It gives fine control, but it gets expensive as the list grows.
- Madrid Protocol. Mexico is a member. It allows a single international application, based on the Mexican registration or application, designating several countries at once. It is managed centrally and usually works out cheaper beyond a certain number of destinations.
The choice depends on how many markets, which ones, and how soon. It is worth deciding with the commercial plan in front of you, not when a container is already on its way.
What gets protected is not only the name
These sauces illustrate it well: what identifies a product on the shelf is rarely just the word.
- The container shape can be registered as a three-dimensional trademark.
- The label and colour combination can be protected as a figurative mark or as a plurality of image elements.
- The recipe or process, if undisclosed, can be held as a trade secret.
And all of it must be covered in the classes matching each product and each associated service.
Before you export, check this
- That your trademark is registered in Mexico and in the company’s name.
- That you have run a clearance search in the destination country before shipping.
- That the packaging and label are protected, not only the name.
- That your overseas distributors have a contract, and that it does not allow them to register the trademark in their own name. It is one of the most painful and most frequent losses there is.
None of these seven brands crossed borders by luck. They crossed with the registration done before arrival.
If you are considering exporting, write to us: we will review at no cost how your trademark stands and what it would take to protect it outside Mexico.