The Mexican Patent Office has been ranked 10th by number of grantings in 2014
- 27 January 2015
- Articles
According to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI) ranks the 14th position by number of patent applications received and 10th position by number of granted patents.
By going up to the 10th position, IMPI is recognized as an efficient Office with similar competences to those of the best patent offices worldwide.
Up to December 2014, IMPI had received 16,126 patent applications, 702 of utility model, and 4,075 industrial design applications, for a total of 20,905 applications.
Also until November 2014, IMPI had granted 9,027 patents 165 utility models and 2,239 industrial designs, which means an overall result of 11,431 grantings.
The timespan for obtaining a patent in Mexico depend on three factors, mainly. Two of these factors depend on the Applicant while the other one is completely dependent on the resources available for the IMPI.
Prosecution time can be optimized in some key stages. Filing complete, clear and concise descriptions is a factor to reduce or avoid formal and substantive objections during the process. If any, the objections will be notified through an Office Action, thus providing the Applicant the opportunity to overcome all of them in light of the corresponding legal framework.
The second factor is related to the time the Applicant takes to respond to Office Actions, as the Mexican legal framework provides that responses can be filed from the notification date of the Office Action and up to four months later.
The complexity of the invention plays the third factor, as this will define the man-hours needed for the substantive examination of an application. The evaluation of an application belonging to the mechanical area will not take the same time as the evaluation of an application belonging to the field of biotechnology. In this regards, it should be noteworthy that since last year the IMPI has displayed a strategy to increase the Examiners’ workforce.
The continuous work and update of the IMPI have resulted in efficient and fast procedures for granting patents, utility models and industrial designs, which have been recognized internationally by WIPO’s Top Offices ranking.
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