Mónica Bonnett

Mónica Bonnett is a partner at Legary IP. Her practice is focused in intellectual property and life sciences regulation.

She advises national and international clients on patents, industrial designs, trade secrets and technology transfer, and on obtaining and managing marketing authorisations before INVIMA and the ICA for pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, medical devices, dietary supplements, food and beverages, cannabis-derived products, pet food, pet cosmetics and veterinary medicines. Her work also covers seeds, plant varieties, genetic material, fertilisers, controlled substances and artificial intelligence applied to healthcare.

Her practice includes regulatory litigation and support across the full product lifecycle — development, commercialisation, import and distribution — and combines IP with regulatory law in due diligence and business structuring. She is particularly recognised for clinical trials and compliance before health authorities.

Mónica Bonnett is an attorney with over three decades of experience in intellectual property and life sciences regulation. She is recognized for her ability to provide innovative and practical legal solutions, especially in matters of high technical complexity.

She advises national and international clients on patent strategies, industrial designs, trade secrets, and technology transfer. She has extensive experience in obtaining and managing regulatory approvals and marketing authorizations for pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, medical devices, dietary supplements, food and beverages, cannabis-derived products, pet food, pet cosmetics, and veterinary medicines.

She also supports companies on issues related to seeds, plant varieties, genetics, fertilizers, controlled substances, and artificial intelligence applied to the healthcare sector. Her practice includes regulatory litigation and support throughout the entire product lifecycle: development, marketing, import, and distribution.

Her approach combines intellectual property and regulatory law for due diligence processes and business model structuring in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, food and beverage, medical device, cannabis, pet food, veterinary medicine, and pet cosmetics industries. She is especially recognized for her efficient and results-oriented advice on sensitive issues such as clinical trials and compliance with health authorities.

Member of ACPI (Asociación Colombiana de la Propiedad Intelectual) and ASIPI (Asociación Interamericana de la Propiedad Intelectual).

Harmonised Labelling of Biological and Biosimilar Medicines in Colombia — Asuntos Legales, May 2025

Challenges of the Front-of-Package Warning Labelling Rules — Asuntos Legales, January 2025

Legal Aspects of the Covid-19 Vaccine — Asuntos Legales, September 2020

Safety Requirements for Producing Magistral Cannabis Formulations — Asuntos Legales, August 2020

Sanitary Registrations for Cannabis-Derived Products — Asuntos Legales, February 2019

Key Considerations When Filing Sanitary Registrations — Asuntos Legales, March 2019

Regulation of Confidential Information in Colombia — Asuntos Legales, August 2018

Outstanding IP Commitments Under the Free Trade Agreement — Asuntos Legales, June 2018

Protection by Patent and by Trade Secret — Asuntos Legales, November 2015

The Keys to Monetising a Patent — Asuntos Legales, January 2016

Co author of Innovation and Intellectual Property: 21st Century Trends, Universidad del Rosario, 2018

Co author of The Cannabis Industry and Its Regulation in Latin America, Asipi, 2023

Patents. Mónica Bonnett's patent clients are multinational technology companies and the foreign IP firms that entrust her with their clients' Latin American filings — instructions reach her from the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, India, Mexico, Japan, India among others Uruguay. They include material science companies serving the pharmaceutical, medical device, food and consumer goods industries, developers of electrochemical and separation technologies, and global pharmaceutical groups whose regional enforcement strategy she has helped design. She coordinates their portfolios from Bogotá across Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Chile and the wider region, combining prosecution with the technical input needed to overcome office actions in each jurisdiction. Also, she provides services to big pharma companies for legal advice in patent litigation.

Life sciences. Her life sciences clients range from multinational groups entering Colombia to long-established domestic manufacturers: pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, medical device manufacturers, veterinary and animal health distributors, animal nutrition and pet food businesses, food and condiment producers, wineries and other alcoholic beverage companies, dietary supplement companies, and plant breeders seeking protection for new varieties. Much of this work is soft-landing — foreign companies whose products must be classified, registered and cleared for the Colombian market before a single unit is sold. She also represents manufacturers in administrative sanction proceedings, recalls and post-market matters before INVIMA and the ICA.

Mónica Bonnett is committed to the professional growth of women in intellectual property and is a co-founder of the Colombian Intellectual Property Women Group , Colombia's network for women in the field.

Mónica Bonnett is the counsel clients bring in when the exposure is structural rather than procedural. Her core work is the consolidation of large Latin American portfolios — sanitary registrations, patents, and animal feed and pet food licences spread across a dozen jurisdictions and, until she takes them over, managed country by country. She rebuilds them under a single strategy directed from Bogotá, so filings, office actions and renewals answer to one set of criteria rather than twelve; the administrative burden falls and the underlying position strengthens at the same time. In patent litigation she works upstream of the dispute — selecting the jurisdictions worth fighting in, choosing test cases capable of setting precedent, aligning claim construction and expert evidence across borders, and anticipating generic entry before it materialises. And when a product must come off the market or an authority opens sanction proceedings, she reframes the matter from formal non-compliance to risk-based analysis, which is what decides those cases.

Thirty years of practice have given Mónica Bonnett something clients cannot buy in a memorandum: the ability to tell, early, which regulatory or patent obstacle is real and which merely looks that way. She reads a matter commercially before she reads it legally — what the client is trying to launch, defend or monetise, on what timeline, and what it costs to be wrong — and works backwards from that to the legal route. Her advice is framed as decisions rather than opinions: which products go straight to filing and which need reformulation, which jurisdictions justify litigation and which do not, when a formal non-compliance carries real exposure and when it can be reframed. Clients rely on her for the judgement calls that sit between science, regulation and business — clinical trials, market entry, sanctioning proceedings, portfolio consolidation — where the answer is rarely purely legal and where being right too late is the same as being wrong.

Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Señora del Rosario

J.D.

1992 - 1997

Universidad Externado de Colombia

Specialist in Consumer Law

1999 - 2000

Nominated as Best Life Sciences Lawyer in Latin America by the IFLR1000 Women in Business Law Awards.

FLR1000 Women in Business Law Awards

2025

As a U.S. citizen who lived and worked in the United States of America, Mónica has developed a strong understanding of the U.S. legal and business environment. Throughout her career, she has also built long-standing and trusted relationships with leading law firms across Latin America. This combination of U.S. experience and an extensive regional network has enabled her to provide Life Science and IP services to U.S. clients, Japanesse, European and Chinesse clientes, across 23 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, coordinating their matters efficiently through a trusted network of local counsel.

Spanish, English