Ten Key Considerations when Registering Latin American Brands in the United States

For a Latin American brand entering the U.S. market, a federal registration is the single most valuable asset you can secure—and since August 3, 2019, you cannot obtain it on your own. Every applicant whose domicile is outside the United States must be represented before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) by a U.S.-licensed attorney.

Miami sits at the crossroads of that traffic. Restaurant groups from Bogotá, fashion labels from São Paulo, tequila houses from Jalisco, and fintechs from Buenos Aires routinely use South Florida as their first U.S. foothold. Many arrive with strong home-country registrations and assume those rights travel with them. They do not.

This article covers who is filing, what the U.S. Counsel Rule requires, ten practical considerations for Latin American brand owners, and what happens to applicants and attorneys who try to work around the rules.

By the Numbers: Latin America’s Leading Trademark Filers Abroad (2021–Present)

Mexico and Brazil dominate Latin American trademark filing abroad, and the United States is the number one foreign destination for brand owners from Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia. In 2024—the latest year with complete country-level data—Mexican applicants filed an estimated 3,200+ trademark classes in the United States, more than twice as many as any other Latin American country.

The U.S. market itself is crowded. USPTO application volume peaked at roughly 943,000 classes in FY 2021, fell to about 788,000 in FY 2022 and 737,000 in FY 2023, then rebounded to about 765,000 in FY 2024. Roughly 39% of 2024 applications came from applicants based outside the United States.

Top 8 Latin American origins by trademark filing abroad, 2024 (WIPO class counts)

Rank	Country of Origin	Classes filed abroad, 2024	Change vs. 2023	U.S. rank among foreign destinations	U.S. share of abroad filing	Est. U.S.-bound classes
1	Mexico	11,522	−3.1%	1st	28.1%	~3,240
2	Brazil	10,402	+30.9%	1st	12.4%	~1,290
3	Panama	5,425	+30.9%	Outside top 5	<7.6%	<410
4	Argentina	5,207	+18.4%	4th	8.8%	~460
5	Colombia	5,090	+15.8%	1st	10.3%	~520
6	Chile	4,441	+8.8%	4th	7.8%	~350
7	Guatemala	2,079	+35.5%	Outside top 5	<9.7%	<200
8	Peru	1,926	+34.1%	Outside top 5	<9.1%	<180

Three trends stand out from 2021 through today:

• Mexico is the anchor market. Mexican applicants’ total trademark filing grew from 152,795 classes in 2021 to 170,662 in 2024, and the U.S. has consistently been their preferred foreign jurisdiction.
• Brazil is accelerating. Brazilian applicants were the fastest-growing major origin worldwide in 2024, up 10.4% overall, with abroad filing up about 31%.
• Andean and Central American growth is regional first. Peru, Guatemala, and Panama grew abroad filing by more than 30% in 2024, but most of it went to neighboring markets — meaning many of these brands have not yet secured U.S. rights.

Ranking at a Glance: Latin American Filers at the USPTO

Mexico is the clear leader among Latin American brand owners filing in the United States, followed by Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, and Chile. The right-hand panel shows momentum since 2021: Brazil, Argentina, Guatemala, and Panama have grown their trademark filing fastest, while Chile has contracted.

The ranking reflects 2024, the most recent year with country-level destination data. Neither the USPTO nor WIPO publishes a year-by-year count of U.S. applications by Latin American country of origin, so the 2021–2023 view tracks each country’s total trademark filing at all offices. A country-by-year USPTO series can be built from the USPTO’s trademark bulk data.

The U.S. Counsel Rule: Why Latin American Brands Cannot File Pro Se

Since August 3, 2019, any trademark applicant, registrant, or TTAB party whose permanent residence or principal place of business is outside the United States must be represented by an attorney licensed in a U.S. state. The rule is codified at 37 C.F.R. § 2.11(a) and was published at 84 Fed. Reg. 31498.

The rule is not aimed at Latin America specifically. It applies equally to applicants from Mexico, Canada, China, or Germany. But in practice it ended a long tradition of Latin American companies, and their home-country agents, filing directly through the USPTO’s online system.

Why the USPTO adopted it. The agency pointed to a surge of inaccurate and possibly fraudulent filings by foreign applicants—especially use claims supported by mocked-up or digitally altered specimens, often prepared by foreign agents not authorized to practice before the USPTO. Before the rule, foreign individuals and companies could represent themselves in applications, registrations, and TTAB proceedings.

What it requires in practice:

• Domicile controls, not citizenship. A Colombian citizen living in Miami can file pro se, but a Miami-incorporated subsidiary whose principal place of business is actually in Bogotá cannot.
• Every filing, not just the application. Office action responses, Statements of Use, Section 8 and 9 maintenance filings, and TTAB oppositions all require U.S. counsel. Legacy registrations become subject to the rule when the next maintenance filing comes due.
• Bar credentials on the record. U.S. attorneys must confirm active good standing and provide bar information on every filing.
• Madrid Protocol filings. Applicants from Madrid members such as Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil may designate the U.S. through WIPO without U.S. counsel at filing, but must appoint U.S. counsel to respond to any provisional refusal.
• Foreign agents can still help—but cannot practice. A Latin American firm may coordinate with U.S. counsel, but the U.S. attorney must actually advise the client, review the filing, and personally sign. The client is the trademark owner, not the foreign agency.

Familiar Latin American offices impose the same requirement on foreigners: Brazil and Chile, for example, have long required foreign applicants to appoint local counsel.

Ten Key Considerations

1. Confirm domicile and file in the name of the true owner

The applicant must be the entity that owns the mark and controls the nature and quality of the goods or services. Filing in the name of a U.S. distributor, a sales subsidiary, or a founder personally—when the Mexican or Brazilian parent actually owns the brand—can render the application void, and the defect cannot be cured by amendment. Decide ownership first, then confirm the owner’s domicile, which determines whether the U.S. Counsel Rule applies.

2. Clear the mark under U.S. rules, not home-country rules

The United States protects rights based on use, not just registration. A coffee shop in Orlando that has used a similar name for years may hold common-law rights that defeat your application or limit your expansion, even if you hold an earlier registration in Colombia. A U.S. clearance search should cover the USPTO register, state registrations, and unregistered use online and in commerce.

3. Apply the doctrine of foreign equivalents to Spanish and Portuguese terms

USPTO examiners translate common foreign words into English before judging descriptiveness and likelihood of confusion. A mark meaning “delicious” for food, or “strong” for coffee, faces the same refusal as its English equivalent. A Spanish mark can also be refused as confusingly similar to an English registration that means the same thing. Every application with non-English wording requires a translation statement, and non-Latin characters require transliteration.

4. Treat place names with care

Brands built on geography—a city, a region, a valley—can be refused as geographically descriptive if the goods come from that place, or as deceptively misdescriptive if they do not. Wines, spirits, coffee, and food products are frequent targets. Geographical indications and denominations of origin recognized at home do not automatically carry the same status in the U.S.

5. Choose the right filing basis

U.S. applications may rest on current use (Section 1(a)), a bona fide intent to use (Section 1(b)), a home-country application or registration (Sections 44(d) and 44(e)), or a Madrid Protocol extension (Section 66(a)). Filing within six months of your home-country application under Section 44(d) preserves that earlier priority date. A Section 44(e) or 66(a) registration can issue without U.S. use, but use is still required to maintain it.

6. Rewrite your goods and services in U.S. terms

The USPTO requires precise, commercially specific identifications. Broad class headings accepted in many Latin American offices will be refused, and identifications cannot be broadened after filing. Fees are charged per class, and the 2025 USPTO fee schedule adds surcharges for free-form descriptions, so careful drafting from the USPTO’s ID Manual saves money and office actions.

7. Use the mark genuinely and keep real specimens

Specimens must show the mark as actually used in U.S. commerce. Digitally altered images and mock-up web pages are a leading reason the U.S. Counsel Rule exists, and they can lead to sanctions and voided registrations. Under the Trademark Modernization Act of 2020, third parties can also petition to expunge or reexamine registrations for goods never used in the U.S.—a real risk for foreign-based registrations that issued without use.

8. Vet your U.S. attorney and the signature chain

Confirm your attorney’s bar admission and good standing directly with the state bar. Every declaration must be personally signed by the person named as signatory: you sign your own declarations, and your attorney personally enters his or her own signature. If a low-cost “filing service” never puts you in direct contact with a licensed attorney, treat that as a warning sign.

9. Control your USPTO.gov account and watch for scam notices

USPTO.gov accounts used for trademark filing require identity verification and may not be shared or lent to others. Once your application is public, expect official-looking solicitations from private companies demanding fees for “registration,” “monitoring,” or “publication.” Route every notice to your U.S. counsel before paying anything.

10. Plan for maintenance and enforcement from day one

Registrations require a Section 8 declaration of use between the fifth and sixth years and combined Section 8 and 9 renewals every ten years, each requiring U.S. counsel for foreign-domiciled owners. Put written agreements in place with U.S. distributors, franchisees, and importers confirming that the brand belongs to you, consider recording the registration with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and monitor the register for copycat filings.

When Shortcuts Backfire: USPTO Sanctions and Disciplinary Rulings

The USPTO enforces the U.S. Counsel Rule on two tracks, and both end the same way for the brand owner: terminated applications and tainted registrations. The Director issues administrative sanctions against filers and filing firms, while the Office of Enrollment and Discipline (OED) disciplines U.S. attorneys who lend their names to foreign filing operations.

The most common scheme looks the same every time. A foreign filing agency recruits a U.S.-licensed attorney—or simply copies one’s name and bar number—and its own staff type the attorney’s electronic signature onto applications, declarations, and specimens. The USPTO treats that conduct as willful circumvention, and an improper signature made to evade the rules cannot be corrected after the fact.

Selected sanctions and disciplinary orders (newest first):

Date	Matter	Track	What happened	Result
Mar. 2026	In re Bartholomew	OED discipline	Attorney’s signature and credentials used on at least 75 trademark documents for foreign-domiciled applicants referred by outside companies	Final order; attorney stopped accepting new foreign-domiciled applications
Aug. 6, 2025	Foreign filing firm (52,000 records)	Administrative sanction	Recruited U.S. attorneys, misused their credentials, faked e-signatures, filed fake specimens, misused USPTO.gov accounts	More than 52,000 applications and registrations terminated; OED issued six final orders against complicit attorneys
May 21, 2025	In re Zhong	OED discipline	Attorney entered foreign clients’ signatures on documents filed with the USPTO	Suspended
2025	In re Hao Ni	OED discipline	Foreign referral agency prepared filings; 4,367 trademark documents were impermissibly signed	Final order; required notice to every affected client
2025	In re Toledano	OED discipline	Non-attorney staff and foreign referral companies entered the attorney’s signature on applications and declarations	Final order
Jan. 6, 2025	In re Okeke	OED discipline	Attorney of record for a filing company’s foreign-domiciled customers; at least 82 applications with improperly entered applicant signatures	Final order
June 13, 2024	In re Stelcore Management Services	Administrative sanction (precedential)	Filing firm entered both applicant and attorney signatures and supplied false attorney information	Applications terminated; signature defects held not correctable
2024	In re Chen	OED discipline	From 2021 to 2023, foreign agencies engaged the attorney as attorney of record and supplied specimens for filing	Final order
2022	In re Morton	OED discipline	Attorney served as U.S. counsel for foreign-domiciled clients of filing entities; about 400 applications filed in a single day	Final order
2021	In re Zhang (Shenzhen Huanyee)	Administrative sanction	Involved in 15,000+ matters; unauthorized practice of law, false domicile information, impermissible signatures	Respondents’ application proceedings terminated
May 12, 2021	In re Lou	OED discipline	Attorney of record on thousands of applications for a Shenzhen agency, whose staff affixed his digital signature	Three-month USPTO suspension; reciprocal suspension in New York

Two lessons follow for Latin American brand owners. First, the published orders to date mostly involve China-based filing operations and we did not identify a published sanctions order naming a Latin American agency. The rules, however, apply identically to any foreign-domiciled applicant. Second, the brand owner pays the price even when an agent committed the misconduct: applications are terminated, filing fees are lost, and registrations are flagged as subject to a sanctions order.

Conclusion: Choose U.S. Counsel Before You Choose a Filing Date

The U.S. Counsel Rule turns attorney selection into the first strategic decision of any U.S. expansion. The right counsel does more than sign: it clears the mark under U.S. use-based rules, translates your goods and services into USPTO-ready language, documents genuine use, and keeps your registration out of the sanctions record.

Before engaging anyone, ask four questions:

1. Is the attorney admitted and in good standing in a U.S. state, and can you verify it yourself?
2. Will you communicate directly with that attorney?
3. Will you personally sign your own declarations?
4. Who will monitor deadlines for Statements of Use, Section 8 declarations, and renewals?

The attorneys at MiamiTrademarkLaw.com can help putt the guess work out of the foregoing. Contact us today at [email protected] or call 305-374-8303 to disuss how we can clear, appy for, register and protrect your brand in the United States.