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Drug Barons Can’t Be Trademarked, EU Court Tells Escobar Brother
Tiffany Tsoi, Bloomberg News

(Bloomberg) -- Pablo Escobar, the name of the late Colombian drug kingpin, can’t be registered as a trademark in the European Union after judges said that approving his brother’s bid would go against “principles of morality.”

The public “associate that name with drug trafficking and narco-terrorism and with the crimes and suffering resulting therefrom, rather than with his possible good deeds in favor of the poor in Colombia,” the EU’s General Court in Luxembourg said on Wednesday.

Trademarking the name is “counter to the fundamental values and moral standards prevailing within Spanish society,” the court said.

Escobar’s brother, Roberto de Jesús Escobar Gaviria, applied to register “Pablo Escobar” as an EU trademark for goods and services with the European Union Intellectual Property Office in 2021. He founded Escobar Inc. in 2015, a company which currently sells cryptocurrency “Escobar cash” on its website.

In the past, the company has been accused of selling mobile phones that were never delivered to customers.