MEXICO Law and Practice Contributed by: Heidi Lindner and Humberto Vega, Arochi & Lindner
The relevant sources of law in this context are the Fed ‑ eral Copyright Law and the LFPPI and its respective regulations. These provisions establish general rules for the protection of copyright and intellectual prop ‑ erty, respectively, without particular distinction for the pharmaceutical and life sciences sectors. 6.3 Trade Secrets In Mexico, litigation regarding trade secrets is not very common in the life sciences and pharmaceutical sectors; however, such litigations exist and constitute an important tool to combat and prevent unfair and dishonest conduct that compromises the secrecy of such information. Among the common problems that can arise within the pharmaceutical and life sciences sectors are the following: • misappropriation of confidential information – the obtention and use of confidential information with ‑ out consent from employees or competitors can occur, for example, when a company hires former employees of a competing company; • collaboration and partnership disputes – disagree ‑ ments may arise over the use and ownership of trade secrets in joint ventures or collaborations; and • data theft and cybersecurity breaches – unauthor ‑ ised access to digital databases containing rel ‑ evant commercial or industrial information can lead to trade-secret disputes. The relevant sources of law in this context are the LFPPI and the Regulation of Health Supplies.
later. In the judgment, the federal district judge will consider the arguments presented by the parties, as well as the records in the original file and previous procedural actions, evaluating whether the granting of the preliminary injunction was correct. Therefore, it is feasible to conclude that the matter is considered de novo. A special consideration to bear in mind when chal ‑ lenging the granting of a preliminary injunction is that for the appeal to be admissible, the appellant must demonstrate that such injunction irreparably vio ‑ lates one of their constitutional rights. Otherwise, the appeal may be dismissed or terminated without fur ‑ ther consideration. Challenge of the Resolutions Handed Down at the First Instance Procedures at the IMPI Once the first-instance resolution is notified to the par ‑ ties, they have the following options. • To file a review appeal before the hierarchical supe ‑ rior of the official who signed the resolution – this must be done within a timeframe of 15 business days. There is no specific legal deadline for resolv ‑ ing the review appeal, but, in recent years, the IMPI has taken an average of 18 months. It is impor ‑ tant to note that this resolution can be challenged through a contentious trial, where the appellant will have the possibility of directly challenging the validity of the original contested resolution, posting new arguments to those originally raised in their review appeal. • To directly file for a contentious administrative trial before the SEPI within a period of 30 days – for the resolution of the contentious trial, there is no spe ‑ cific legal deadline. However, in practice, each trial can take about a year. In both cases, both the IMPI and SEPI are limited to examining the arguments of the parties, only analysing errors of apprecia ‑ tion and procedural flaws that occurred during the administrative procedure. It can be concluded that in these appeals, the matters are not studied de novo.
7. Appeal 7.1 Timeframe to Appeal Decision Contesting Preliminary Injunctions
In Mexico, the only way to challenge and seek sus ‑ pension of a preliminary injunction is via an Amparo suit before the federal courts. The period to file this is 15 business days from notification of the defendant. Once an indirect Amparo lawsuit is admitted, the date for holding the hearing is approximately one month
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