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Mexican Patent Litigation, International Intellectual Property Treaties and the Extension of Patent Term of Protection

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Abstract

This article analyzes how the provisions on patent term adjustments contained in the new United States-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement (USMCA) will be problematic for Mexico. To illustrate this point, the article revisits a patent litigation in Mexico. The plaintiff was a Japanese company who was suing over the infringement of its rights by a Mexican Lab. In this case, Transitional Article Twelve of the Mexican Industrial Property Act was applied to recognize a priority filing date seven years later than its original filing in Japan. The litigation involved several issues such as the extension of the term of protection and the alleged infringement by the defendant after the authorities had extended the term of the patent. There are several principles and concerns discussed, including the principle of patent independence, national treatment, and minimum term of protection, all of which are contained in the Paris Convention, the TRIPS Agreement, and the Patent Cooperation Treaty.

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Notes

  1. Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, Stockholm (September 28, 1979).

  2. Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, Marrakech (April 15, 1994).

  3. Extended practice in several legal systems. Lemley and Moore (2004), p. 94; Shinall (2012), p. 374.

  4. Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, Stockholm (September 28, 1979).

  5. Patent Cooperation Treaty, Washington (June 19, 1970).

  6. Farrand (2006), p. 1266.

  7. Mexican Industrial Property Act (June 27, 1991).

  8. Solovy and Krishnamurthy (2017), p. 96. To illustrate this point, an application to protect the same invention called Thiazolidine Derivatives, was discarded for lack of novelty on April 6, 2001, by the National Institute of Industrial Property INAPI of Chile on April 6, 2001. Available at: https://ion.inapi.cl/Patente/ConsultaAvanzadaPatentes.aspx. Accessed January 6, 2019.

  9. Tobias et al. (2009), p. 115; Pil (2014), p. 358.

  10. Mexican Inventions and Trademarks Act (February 10, 1976), Arts. 10 and 65 (no longer in force).

  11. Lapenne (2010), p. 198.

  12. Mexican Industrial Property Act (June 27, 1991), Transitional Article 12.

  13. El Economista, September 12, 2010.

  14. El Economista, September 12, 2010.

  15. Mexican Senate, April 26, 2007.

  16. Goldstein (2008), p. 351.

  17. Mueller (2009), p. 525.

  18. Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, Stockholm (September 28, 1979), Art. 2.

  19. Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, Stockholm (September 28, 1979), Art. 4.

  20. Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, Stockholm (September 28, 1979), Art. 4(B).

  21. Patent Cooperation Treaty, Washington (June 19, 1970), Arts. 3, 10.

  22. Patent Cooperation Treaty, Washington (June 19, 1970), Art. 15.

  23. Patent Cooperation Treaty, Washington (June 19, 1970), Art. 21.

  24. Patent Cooperation Treaty, Washington (June 19, 1970), Art. 22.

  25. Khoury (2012), p. 209.

  26. Ilardi and Blakeney (2004), p. 40.

  27. Abbott et al. (2007), p. 219.

  28. Pires (2005), p. 71.

  29. Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, Stockholm (September 28, 1979), Art. 2(1).

  30. Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Marrakech (April 15, 1994), Art. 27(1).

  31. Mueller (2009), p. 544.

  32. Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, Marrakech (April 15, 1994), Arts. 31, 28 and 33. Markham (2011), p. 124.

  33. Andrews (2011), p. 226.

  34. Case No. 14113/05-17-05-9, 2006, p. 4.

  35. Case No. 14113/05-17-05-9, 2006, p. 6.

  36. Unless it is a provisional application, such as those existing in several legal systems, so that the original application date does not affect the term of protection. Migliorini (2007), p. 439.

  37. Case No. 14113/05-17-05-9, 2006, p. 8.

  38. Case No. 14113/05-17-05-9, 2006, p. 15.

  39. Case No. 14113/05-17-05-9, 2006, p. 27.

  40. Case No. 14113/05-17-05-9, 2006, p. 29.

  41. Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, Stockholm (September 28, 1979), Art. 4bis.

  42. Pires (2005), p. 74; Goldstein (2008), p. 353.

  43. See Mahne (2012), p. 170; Oddi (1987), p. 860; Abbott et al. (2007), p. 173.

  44. This question has also been recognized, or rather taken for granted, in American case law, see Voda v. Cordis 476 F.3d 887 (Fed. Cir. 2007), pp. 898–899.

  45. Correa (2007), p. 44.

  46. Ersling and Strove (2015), p. 513.

  47. Mexican Supreme Court of Justice, Case No. P. LXXVII/99, Federal Judiciary Gazette, Ninth Time, volume X, November 1999, p. 46.

  48. Second Chamber, Mexican Supreme Court of Justice, Case No. IV.2o.A.76 K (10a.), Federal Judiciary Gazette, Tenth Time, book 12, November 2014, volume IV, p. 2918.

  49. Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, Marrakech (April 15, 1994), Arts. 41–60.

  50. Takeda v. Rimsa (IMPI 2013), p. 3.

  51. Takeda v. Rimsa (2013), p. 45.

  52. Takeda v. Rimsa (2013), p. 53.

  53. Takeda v. Rimsa (2013), p. 107.

  54. Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, Marrakech (April 15, 1994), Art. 41(3), establishes that decisions declaring infringement must be “reasoned.”

  55. McJohn (2003), p. 173.

  56. Takeda v. Rimsa (IMPI 2013), p. 109.

  57. Approx. 80,000 US dollars at an exchange rate of 20 Mexican pesos per dollar.

  58. Takeda v. Rimsa (IMPI 2013), p. 113.

  59. Approx. 1.2 million US dollars at an exchange rate of 20 Mexican pesos per dollar.

  60. Amparo 245/2014 (2014), p. 28.

  61. Amparo 245/2014 (2014), p. 33.

  62. Amparo 245/2014 (2014), p. 34.

  63. Amparo 245/2014 (2014), p. 34.

  64. Amparo 245/2014 (2014), p. 36.

  65. Amparo 245/2014 (2014), p. 42.

  66. In this specific case, the doctrine usually called this procedure Amparo Cassation, because of its similarity to the cassation appeal of French origin. Fix-Zamudio and Valencia (2009), p. 924.

  67. Rabasa (1955), pp. 75 and 103.

  68. Burgoa (2009), p. 145.

  69. Amparo 245/2014 (2014), p. 76.

  70. Inconformidad 608/2015 (2015), p. 13.

  71. Hughes (2017), p. 493.

  72. USMCA, Art. 20.44(3).

  73. USMCA, Art. 20.46(2).

  74. Kilic (2014), p. 44.

  75. Weatherall (2016), p. 261.

  76. Weatherall (2016), p. 260.

  77. Walker (2001), p. 203.

  78. 35 U.S.C. §§ 154–156.

  79. Moberg (2014), p. 238.

  80. Cardenas-Navia (2014), p. 1304.

  81. Cardenas-Navia (2014), p. 1312. See also 35 U.S.C. § 156.

  82. Iyengar (2015), p. 668; Hemphill and Lemley (2011), p. 951

  83. Shepherd (2016), p. 23.

  84. Lindner and Morante (2018), p. 338.

  85. Weatherall (2016), p. 265.

  86. Kilic (2014), p. 31; Sell (2011), pp. 469–470.

  87. Gathil and Ho (2017), p. 429.

  88. Gathil and Ho (2017), p. 430.

  89. ICSID, Ely Lilly v. Canada, Case No. UNCT/14/2 , March 16, 2017. Available at: http://icsidfiles.worldbank.org/icsid/ICSIDBLOBS/OnlineAwards/C3544/DC10133_En.pdf.

  90. Vadi (2015), p. 25.

  91. Samples (2019), p. 140.

  92. Vadi (2015), p. 61.

  93. Gervais (2019), pp. 290–291.

  94. Gervais (2019), p. 294.

  95. Mexican Constitution, Art. 28, p. 10.

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  1. LL.M., Ph.D. (Tulane); Professor of Intellectual Property Law, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Monterrey, Mexico

    Roberto Garza Barbosa

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Garza Barbosa, R. Mexican Patent Litigation, International Intellectual Property Treaties and the Extension of Patent Term of Protection. IIC 51, 6–30 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40319-019-00889-8

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