A bipartisan
group of Congress members asked the federal government Wednesday to review and
explain the Office of Foreign Assets Control's decision to grant a Havana Club
rum trademark to a company owned by the Cuban government. In a letter to Secretary of the Treasury
Steven Mnuchin and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, a group of 25 lawmakers,
led by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz,
D-Fla., asked for a review of the license granted to allow Cubaexport to renew
an expired trademark registration for Havana Club rum in the United States.
The lawmakers
said the Cuban government confiscated the trademark without compensation from
Jose Arechabala SA and the renewal should not have been granted by the Office
of Foreign Assets Control because of a longstanding policy to protect intellectual
property owners from piracy. Bacardi says it purchased the Havana Club name in
1994 from Arechabala. The lawmakers
asked for clarification as to why OFAC did not apply Section 211, a provision
passed in 1988 that effectively denies legal protection to trademarks of
properties seized by Fidel Castro's government, in the most recent application
for renewal of Cubaexport's license.
In a
statement, Ros-Lehtinen said OFAC's decision to grant a license to Cubaexport
"was an unprecedented decision with alarming implications for American
intellectual property rights holders."
"It was a decision made for political expedience that ignored
standing U.S. law and potentially opened a Pandora's box that could see U.S.
intellectual property rights holders subject to unlawful and unjust foreign
confiscations," Ros-Lehtinen said.
Cubaexport had
no trouble renewing the mark for decades, until Section 211 was wedged into a
1998 appropriations bill. That prompted a World Trade Organization case against
the U.S. from the European Union on behalf of Pernod Ricard. Though the body
ultimately faulted Section 211, there have been only minimal attempts by the
U.S. to comply with the ruling. In
March 2011, the D.C. Circuit ruled that the U.S. government could refuse to
allow Cubaexport to renew its trademark because of Section 211.
Last year,
Bacardi renewed the fight with a lawsuit arguing that the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office wrongly allowed Cubaexport to renew the registration. Ros-Lehtinen and Wasserman-Schultz, who have
both been skeptical of former President Obama's effort to normalize diplomatic
and economic relations with Cuba, sent a similar letter last year, accusing the
administration of ignoring Section 211.
Read More at https://www.wsj.com/articles/lawmakers-question-u-s-decision-to-give-rum-trademark-to-cuba-1455147430
