Lawmakers Question U.S. Decision to Give Rum Trademark to Cuba
February 10 2016 - 7:07PM
Dow Jones News
By Felicia Schwartz
WASHINGTON--A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers said they are
concerned about the Obama administration's decision last month to
award a trademark for Havana Club rum to the Cuban government.
In a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry and Treasury
Secretary Jacob Lew on Tuesday, Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R.,
Fla.) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D., Fla.), along with 23 other
lawmakers, said they feared granting the trademark could undermine
protections for American intellectual property rights holders.
Most of the congressional signatories to the letter--17 of
25--are from Florida, where President Barack Obama's Cuba policy
remains a divisive issue.
Of the Democrats who signed on, eight of 11 are from Florida.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National
Committee, hasn't enthusiastically embraced Mr. Obama's policy
shift with Cuba. She has said previously that she is considering
the policy shift and hopes Mr. Obama will use it to press Cuba to
improve human rights.
"I've been firmly committed to protecting the intellectual
property rights of American companies, and I was pleased to join
this letter with Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and many of my Florida
colleagues," she said in a separate statement, without singling out
Cuba.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen said the U.S. decision to grant the trademark
to Cuba was "politically motivated" by the Obama administration's
move to normalize ties with Cuba.
"This original family's factories and trademarks were
confiscated by the Castro regime and the U.S. government should not
take any action which would embolden any foreign entity that could
confiscate U.S. trademarks and intellectual property," she
said.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control decided last month to grant
a license to state-run Cubaexport to renew an expired trademark
registration for Havana Club rum in a move that has reignited a
decadeslong battle tension between Bacardi Ltd. and the Cuban
government over the use of the Havana Club trademark in the
U.S.
Bacardi left Cuba after the 1959 revolution and later acquired
the rights to the Havana Club trademark from its prerevolutionary
owner, whose distillery was nationalized. The U.S. previously had
recognized Bacardi's claim to the Havana Club name under a law that
aims to protect owners of Cuban companies that were nationalized
after the Cuban revolution.
The decision to grant Cubaexport the trademark would allow the
Cuban government to sell Cuban-made Havana Club in the U.S. for the
first time in decades once the U.S. economic embargo on Cuba is
lifted.
That is unlikely to happen before President Barack Obama leaves
office in 2017, but experts, lobbyists and lawmakers in favor of
the shift have said they expect it will in the next five years.
Bacardi had been selling Havana Club-branded rum in the U.S.
since 1994. That rum is made in Puerto Rico because of the economic
embargo. Pernod Richard SA, which has a joint venture with the
Cuban government, has been selling a Cuban-made version of the rum
outside of the U.S.
Amy Federman, a Bacardi spokeswoman, said, "Bacardi is pleased
to see that members of Congress are standing up for property rights
and looking into this issue."
The company has filed a Freedom of Information Act request
seeking records to explain why the U.S. decided to return the
rights to use the name Havana Club back to the Cuban state company,
which runs a joint venture with a global rival liquor company.
On Thursday, Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), a signatory to the
letter, will chair a hearing on the Havana Club trademark battle
and property claims. U.S. and Cuban officials met to talk about
billions of dollars of competing property claims for the first time
last December.
The claims, valued on the U.S. side to be between $7 billion and
$8 billion, are among the most contentious issues the two sides
will address as they push for full normalization. Cuba, for its
part, said at the United Nations this year it is owed about $121
billion for damages from the economic embargo.
Write to Felicia Schwartz at Felicia.Schwartz@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 10, 2016 18:52 ET (23:52 GMT)
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