Indigenous Colombian coca company challenges Coca-Cola’s trademark

Coca-Cola might be the world’s most recognisable brand. But what would it be with only half the name?

An Indigenous business in Colombia, acting, it says, “in defence of the coca leaf,” is asking the Government to revoke the beverage giant’s century-old trademark on the word “coca”.

The coca plant, which is used to produce not only Coca-Cola but also cocaine, is a major legal crop in several South American countries.

Coca Nasa, which produces energy drinks, beers and liquors made with coca, contends that extending trademark protection to the Atlanta-based multinational violates “the fundamental rights of Indigenous peoples.” The mechanism has been used “abusively” by Coca-Cola, it said in a statement, and should be rescinded.

Motivating the action, Coca Nasa says, is what it calls a history of Coca-Cola bullying smaller businesses into capitulating to its demands.

“This is as if David and Goliath were battling over colonialism,” David Curtidor, co-founder of Coca Nasa, told the Washington Post. “These business giants arrive thinking they’re entitled to our cultural heritage and that they can then demand that we stop using it. What we’re saying is: ‘We’ve had enough.’”

Harvesting the leaves of the coca plant. Photo / 123RF

A Coca-Cola spokesman, in response to questions about the company’s relationships with Indigenous communities, its use of the coca plant and the dispute with Coca Nasa, responded with a statement.

“The Coca-Cola Company respects all communities and their traditions as well as the laws and regulations of each country where it operates,” Scott Leith said.

The battle has been brewing between the two businesses for nearly two decades - most of Coca Nasa’s history.

Curtidor and partner Fabiola Piñacué founded Coca Nasa, named for an Indigenous group native to southern Colombia, in 1998. They aimed to destigmatise the coca leaf, a crop cultivated by Andean communities for medicinal and ceremonial purposes for centuries. By selling drinks, food and supplements made with the plant, Curtidor said, Coca Nasa had attempted to “show the other face of coca and help it shed its dirty image”.

In its raw form, the coca plant doesn’t have the narcotic effects of cocaine - just as poppy plants are not heroin. To make cocaine, the coca plant’s leaves must be broken down in solvents and processed with chemicals to produce a paste that can be reduced to white powder. But since the 1960s, when Colombia became the global centre for cocaine production, the plant has stood as a symbol of the violence, death and addiction that its use unleashed.

A 1961 treaty, now enforced by the International Narcotics Control Board, requires the “uprooting of all coca bushes which grow wild” and bans the distribution of products with even trace amounts of the plant. But a loophole allows the leaves to be sold internationally if they are distilled of their cocaine alkaloid to produce a “flavouring agent” - the one Coca-Cola uses in its product.

The global brand is facing a challenge to its trademark.

“And this is all incredibly ironic and hypocritical, because we’ve had our products banned and our cultural heritage destroyed while Coca-Cola has been allowed to continue selling without issues,” Curtidor said.

Cocaine was a “primary ingredient” in Coca-Cola in the late 1800s, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, before “its crude form” was removed from the product. “Today the extract of the coca leaves, a de-cocainised version, is manufactured in the United States and used in the flavouring for Coca-Cola,” the DEA says. (Coca-Cola says its drink “does not contain cocaine or any other harmful substance, and cocaine has never been an added ingredient in Coca‑Cola.”)

Coca Nasa’s Curtidor’s first run-in with the beverage giant came in 2007, Curtidor said, when Coca Nasa released its Coca Sek energy drink and Coca-Cola responded with a trademark-infringement suit. The suit was dismissed, but the product was temporarily banned from shelves after the International Narcotics Control Board asked Colombia’s foreign minister to explain a letter asking how the drink didn’t violate the 1961 treaty. Coca Nasa appealed the ban and won.

The release of Coca Nasa’s Coca Pola, “pola” being Colombian slang for beer, provoked a similar response. Coca-Cola sent a letter demanding the company “cease and desist permanently from using the name Coca Pola or any similar term that could be confused with the commercial brands” it owned. Though Coca Pola rhymes with Coca-Cola, Curtidor insisted that it was just “the obvious way to name a beer made with coca”.

In its letter, Coca-Cola said it was giving Coca Nasa 10 days to act. For Curtidor, that was the final straw.

“That’s when we went, ‘Actually, no. You are the one who has 10 days to explain who gave you permission to use the coca plant and who gave you permission to use the name of a key element of our culture in your products,’” he said. “We sent them a letter to that effect and, well, they never responded.”

That lack of response, Curtidor says, prompted Coca Nasa to ask Colombia’s trademark agency this month to intervene. As he sees it, registering the trademark without consulting the Nasa Indigenous community amounted to an “abusive and usurpative practice that violates our rights”.

Colombia’s superintendent of industry and commerce, he said, has until Friday to respond to their claim - one that, if granted, would prohibit the beverage giant from using its iconic name. The superintendent’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Curtidor says the Indigenous community wouldn’t be against Coca-Cola using “coca” in its name - “if they ask nicely.”

Coca-Cola has battled smaller companies over alleged trademark infringements. It won a lawsuit against a Norwegian company selling a product called Jallasprite, which a court ruled was too close to Sprite. It dropped a challenge to an Australian company selling an iced tea product called Honest Tea, which was also the name of a tea sold by a company it had acquired. The magazine Salon called the case a “bully lawsuit.”

“The problem, at its core, is about Coca-Cola’s entitlement,” Curtidor said. “If they came and asked for permission, sat down to dialogue and discussed compensation, we wouldn’t have an issue and I’m sure we could reach an agreement. But you can’t just bully us and expect that we’ll sit with arms crossed just because we’re a smaller company.”