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Ruling comes after US Trademark Trial and Appeal Board 20 cancelled US-based agency General Cigar’s trademark registrations for time period ‘Cohiba’ for cigars, stated Habanos SA, Cuba’s state cigar monopoly.
(Reuters Archive)
Cuba has received the newest spherical of a 25-year-old authorized spat over US trademark rights to its famed Cohiba cigars, the smokes as soon as favoured by Fidel Castro, the corporate that markets them stated.
The ruling on Friday got here after the US Trademark Trial and Appeal Board on December 20 cancelled the US-based agency General Cigar’s trademark registrations for the time period ‘Cohiba’ for cigars, stated Habanos SA, a three way partnership between Altadis of Britain and state-owned Cubatabaco.
General Cigar sells a non-Cuban model of the Cohiba model within the United States, the place Cuban Cohibas can not legally be bought due to the US commerce embargo.
The ruling means Cubatabaco can register the Cohiba model trademark — thought-about the perfect of its 27 sorts of cigars marketed in additional than 100 nations — within the US although it can not promote them there.
General Cigar stated it can enchantment.
25 years of authorized battle
Cubatabaco stated the struggle over the trademark within the US goes again to 1997.
Cohiba cigars had been first rolled in 1966 and owe their identify to the phrase utilized by Indigenous folks centuries in the past to check with the tobacco leaves they smoked.
Castro, who died in 2016, puffed on Cohibas till he kicked the behavior in 1985.
Tobacco is one among Cuba’s most important sources of export income.
Tobacco earnings grew 15 p.c in 2021 to complete 568 million {dollars}, in keeping with Habanos SA.
Source: AFP
