…the news today that Bolivian president Evo Morales planned to launch his own soft drink called “Coca-Colla” and to market it in a red-black-and-white with swooshy lettering, kind of jumped off the page at me. With Latin American countries starting to move towards adoption of the Madrid Protocol, maybe President Morales saw this as his last best chance to infringe on the world’s fourth most-valuable brandname. Or maybe he assumed that there would be some some sort of head-of-state exemption granting him “diplomatic” immunity from prosection for any of his crimes against intellectual property. Or maybe, since his drink contains actual coca leaves, maybe he was going to argue descriptiveness for the word ”coca” and seek to inviolate its registrability in connection with cola drinks (hey…buena suerte on that one there, Evo).
At any rate, it’s a nice little reminder that the law can become so ingrained in our everyday lives that we take it to be part of the metaphysical underpinnings by which our world works…unti we realize that that law ain’t necessarily the law everywhere.
So until Madrid comes to La Paz, Evo, keep the Cacacha y Coca-Colla flowing.
Tags: trademark law