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Bacardí suffered another judicial defeat on Tuesday in the long battle for the rights to the Havana Club brand in the United States.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a decision allowing Cubaexport, a Cuban state-owned enterprise, to maintain the trademark registration for rum in the United States, dismissing the arguments presented by the Cuban-origin company, as reported by Reuters.
The decision represents a significant setback for Bacardí, which for years has sought to prevent the Cuban regime from retaining rights to a brand whose history dates back to before the 1959 Revolution.
The ruling confirms the previous decision made by federal judge Leonie Brinkema, who had dismissed a lawsuit filed by Bacardí against the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
At the center of the dispute was the renewal of the Havana Club brand carried out in 2016.
Bacardí argued that Cubaexport had lost that right a decade earlier when the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) denied it the necessary license to renew the registration.
However, the magistrates concluded that the situation changed when the OFAC finally authorized the operation during the final months of Barack Obama's administration, allowing the renewal to be carried out legally.
"The OFAC license clarified the confusion, removing the legal obstacle that had prevented the 2005 transfer from being considered a payment," the court noted in its decision.
The dispute over Havana Club is one of the longest and most symbolic related to Cuban properties and assets since Fidel Castro came to power.
The brand was created in 1934 by the company José Arechabala S.A., founded in Cárdenas, Matanzas. After the revolution, the Cuban government nationalized the company, and decades later, Cubaexport registered the brand in the United States.
Bacardí, whose owners left Cuba after the revolutionary confiscations, later acquired the rights from the Arechabala family and began marketing its own version of Havana Club rum in the U.S. market, claiming that the original assets had been illegally expropriated.
The legal battle has gone through various courts over the past few years. In 2021, Bacardí filed a lawsuit against the USPTO; subsequently, the case was dismissed, reopened, and again rejected, culminating in the decision announced this Tuesday.
The ruling comes just a few months after the approval in the United States of the so-called "Bacardi Law", legislation signed by former President Joe Biden at the end of 2024 aimed at preventing courts and federal agencies from recognizing rights over trademarks confiscated by the Cuban regime after 1959.
Havana harshly criticized that regulation. Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez described it at the time as a new coercive measure against Cuba, while officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned that it could affect future renewals of the Havana Club brand.
However, the court's decision focuses on the renewal approved in 2016, several years before the enactment of that legislation.
Neither Bacardí nor its legal representatives have publicly reacted to the ruling, according to Reuters.
Currently, Cubaexport markets Havana Club outside of the United States in collaboration with the French company Pernod Ricard, and the brand is sold in more than 120 countries. However, the U.S. market remains one of the main battlegrounds in a dispute that, more than six decades after the revolutionary confiscations, remains unresolved.
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