Mexico is putting the fight against online counterfeits onto e-commerce platforms' own rulebooks. On 21 October 2026, the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI), part of the Secretariat of Economy, together with the industry confederation CONCAMIN, held a session whose centrepiece was the signing of a 'Declaration of Principles of Digital Platforms in favour of Intellectual Property'. To be clear up front: this is a government-platform cooperation framework, a voluntary declaration of principles — not a new mandatory regulation.
The signatories cover most of Mexico's main marketplaces and retailers: Alibaba, Amazon México, Mercado Libre, TikTok and Walmart México, plus Sears, Coppel and Sanborns, along with the Mexican postal service (Correos de México); the Secretariat of Economy and IMPI signed as witnesses. The declaration's aim is to jointly prevent the listing of counterfeit or infringing goods, protect consumers, and foster cooperation among platforms, merchants, rights holders and authorities.
The declaration sets out four practical lines of action: merchant identification; detection of counterfeit goods; training and accessible complaint mechanisms for rights holders; and measures against suspected infringing listings where there are sufficient grounds — with safeguards to prevent abusive complaints and unjustified harm to legitimate sellers.
For brand owners, the real value is not how much counterfeit was seized on the day, but that a shared set of rules — who identifies, how to complain, how listings are handled, how abuse is prevented — is now jointly committed to in writing by the platforms. It pulls scattered platform practices onto a single list of principles, giving cross-platform enforcement a more consistent expectation.
Mind the limits, though: a declaration of principles is not a binding obligation, and implementation still turns on each platform's own rules and processes; how it works in practice, complaint turnaround, and the appeal and anti-abuse mechanisms all remain to be seen. It also does not change Mexico's existing trademark, copyright or administrative-enforcement framework.
J&C recommends that brands selling or enforcing through these platforms in Mexico use this to map each platform's rights-holder complaint channels and required materials, keep trademark and ownership evidence ready, and build a cross-platform monitoring and complaint log. Watch the anti-abuse terms too: complaints should rest on sufficient grounds and a documented trail, to avoid being rejected or, worse, treated as abusive.
Source: www.gob.mx
