In recent years, since the Superintendent’s Office of Industry and Trade (Colombian Trademark Office) assumed jurisdictional functions in the field of industrial property, lawsuits related to trademark infringements have had a considerable increase. In some of these lawsuits, the defendants have invoked the previous use of a trade name as the main defense argument. In this article we will conduct a study of the trade name as a means of defense in trademark infringement lawsuits, analyzing the provisions of Decision 486/2000, the doctrine and jurisprudence of the Colombian Trademark Office.