Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/CUBA: Cuba has won a 25-year-old legal spat over the US trademark rights to its famed Cohiba cigars — smokes once favoured by the late leader Fidel Castro — the company that markets them said on Saturday.
Cohiba Cigars
The ruling came after the US Trademark Trial and Appeal Board on December 20 cancelled the US-based firm General Cigar’s trademarkv registrations for the term ‘Cohiba’ for cigars, said Habanos SA, the joint venture between Altadis of Britain and state-owned Cubatabaco.
General Cigar sells a non-Cuban version of a Cohiba brand in the United States, where Cuban Cohibas cannot legally be sold because of the US trade embargo.
A ruling means Cubatabaco has registered the Cohiba brand trademark, considered the best of its 27 kinds of cigars marketed in more than 100 countries in the US, even though it cannot sell them there.
