On April 6, 2009, the Instituto Mexicano de la Propiedad Industrial or Mexican Patent and Trademark Office (MPTO) received the trademark application serial number one million.

The applied trademarks is “NOVO DENT” and the applicant is Jorge Sharon Cohen Cherbowski (Mexican citizen). The trademark covers teeth whitening services.

Although the Instituto Mexicano de la Propiedad Industrial started working under its current structure and legal frame in 1994, the truth is that the MPTO has actually received more then one million trademark applications throughout its history.

For some reason I am not familiar with, the MPTO reseted the application numbers at some point in the 80’s; I am not sure if similar resets took place before. Further, the application serial numbers for trademarks do not take into account the applications for avisos comerciales or commercial slogans and for nombres comerciales or trade names, which receive separate application numbers.

In any case, the growing number of trademark applications handled each year by the MPTO poses a great challenge.

The MPTO has made significant efforts to improve its technologic capabilities and services. Although some adjustments are still required and there is no electronic filing, the new on-line services for the review of electronic files and documents deserve a special acknowledgement.

Of course, the MPTO is still far from being what practitioners expect from it. There are still many technical and regulation deficiencies, and examiners are often criticized for the decisions and positions they assume. In defense of the Mexican examiners, I still have to meet a trademark practitioner that is happy with the examiners of his/her own national office.