‘Pablo Escobar’ cannot be registered as a trademark, EU court rules

A top EU court has ruled that the name of the dead Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar cannot be registered as a trademark in the EU.

Escobar Inc, a company set up by his brother Roberto, had filed an application in 2021 with the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) to register “Pablo Escobar” as a trademark for goods and services.

Shot dead by security forces in 1993, Pablo Escobar was the founder of the Medellín cartel, a criminal organisation that trafficked cocaine across the globe. He was featured in a hit Netflix series called Narcos.

EUIPO initially rejected the application as the mark was contrary “to accepted principles of morality”. Escobar Inc went to court in 2022 to appeal against that decision, but the General Court upheld it on Wednesday, saying the EUIPO move was based “on the perception of the Spanish public, as it is the most familiar with Pablo Escobar due to the links between Spain and Colombia”.

The court said the trademark would be associated “with drug trafficking and narco-terrorism and with the crimes and suffering resulting therefrom, rather than with his possible good deeds in favour of the poor in Colombia”.

As a result, the court added, the trademark would be perceived as being against the “fundamental values and moral standards” that prevail in Spain, an EU member state.

Tim Carter, managing associate in the intellectual property team of law firm Addleshaw Goddard, said in an analysis of the ruling that it showed EUIPO was not going to allow this kind of commercial exploitation of personal names.

“In the future, it will be interesting to see whether criminality is an absolute bar to the registration of personal names, and where the EUIPO will make any distinction between degrees of criminal behaviour,” he said.

Founded in 1984, Escobar Inc is a holding company set up by Roberto in Medellín, according to its website. It manages the assets of the Escobar family, including intellectual property rights.

The company has launched other lawsuits, including against Apple and Netflix and one against payments company Klarna, which it accused of unfairly withholding €400,000 owed in exchange for Escobar-branded mobile phones sold on the fintech group’s platform. That case was later dropped.

The EU court stressed that Pablo Escobar’s right to be presumed innocent had not been violated because “even though he was never criminally convicted, he is publicly perceived in Spain as a symbol of organised crime responsible for numerous crimes”. 

The ruling can be appealed.