Do Mexican courts and authorities accept the doctrine of equivalents in connection to patent infringement?
There are no published precedents accepting or rejecting the doctrine of equivalents in Mexico. On one hand, the doctrine of equivalents would seem to be in conflict with the Constitutional principle of Legality, that stipulates that analogy or equivalency may not be used to determine a specific conduct as punishable; although this principle is mainly related to criminal law, it is generally accepted that it should be extended to all cases where the State imposes a penalty due the infringement of a statutory provision. On the other hand, the Mexican statute provides that the scope of the protection conferred by a Mexican patent shall be determined by the claims, and that the description and drawings may be used to interpret the claims. Therefore, if the claims may be interpreted, there could be room for the doctrine of equivalents.
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