If your trademark was granted to you on or after August 10, 2018, you must declare its use 3 years after it was granted to you. This declaration of use must be made within 3 months after your trademark has been granted for 3 years.
Such obligation comes from the article 233 of the Federal Law for the Protection of Industrial Property. Which reads as follows:
The owner of a trademark must declare its real and effective use, indicating the specific products or services to which it is applied, accompanying the payment of the corresponding fee.
The declaration shall be filed before the Institute during the following three months, counted from the third year after the registration has been granted.
Why does it only apply to trademarks granted as from August 10, 2018? The current Industrial Property Law was published on July 1, 2020. But in its eleventh transitory article, it states that the obligation to declare the use of the trademark applies to trademarks granted as from August 10, 2018.
This declaration can be made either physically or online, involves a fee of $985.67, and requires a manifestation stating that the trademark is being used.
If the aforementioned declaration of use is not filed, the trademark automatically expires. And any other person has the possibility to register it in its favor.
If your trademark was granted before August 10, 2018, you will only have to worry about renewing it within 6 months before it turns 10 years old. But once renewed, I do advise that you contemplate a declaration of use within 3 years of renewal.
Filing the aforementioned declaration of use does not exempt the holder from the obligation to continue using its trademark, because there would still be 7 years of validity during which the trademark must be used.
Both the current and previous laws contemplate the possibility of someone requesting the revocation of a trademark under the argument that the owner of the trademark did not use it for three years. So this applies to all trademarks, regardless of whether they were granted before or after August 2018.
All of the abovementioned has its justification: the granting of a trademark is to give a monopoly over a distinctive sign. Hence, the least that the beneficiary of that monopoly can do is to use it.
