Under the provisions set forth in the Mexican Industrial Property Law (IPL), therapeutic treatment methods applicable to the human body shall not be regarded as inventions and consequently, they are not susceptible of protection. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (MIIP), upon adopting into practice the patentability criteria established in the European Patent Convention (EPC) 1973 of the European Patent Office (EPO), allowed the protection of known substances by reference to their first or subsequent medical use in therapeutic treatment methods using the format "the use of substance X for the manufacture of a medicament for the treatment of disease Y" (also known as Swiss-type claims), so that the MIIP had usually accepted this format even though the IPL was not amended in order to provide a legal basis for such claims.
