the rule of a mafiosi regime....

[posei...@sympatico.ca]

After stealing ( euphemistically : nationalizing ) the companies form their original owners...the tyrann of Cuba pretends to blullishly mock of international Law and Trade marks...

No wonders even champagne and other wines from France discovered the fake ones being produced and exported by this thug to some countries. Using South African wines to make some of the fake champagnes.

From: PL <P...@pandora.be>
Subject: Next Round of Bacardi May Be on Castro
Date: Sunday, March 25, 2001 4:02 PM

Friday March 23 09:13 AM EST
Next Round of Bacardi May Be on Castro
By Leela Jacinto ABCNEWS.com
A new round of rum wars between Fidel Castro and a company owned by a Cuban
family in exile is brewing. In a new trademark duel with Bacardi and Co.,
Castro has warned that the next round of the famous Bacardi brew will be on
him.

There's a war of the spirits brewing between Fidel Castro and a world-famous
rum manufacturing company owned by a Cuban family in exile.

In what is being seen as yet another shot at a long-standing trademark
dispute between the Cuban president and the Bermuda-based Bacardi and Co.,
Castro warned that his island nation would soon be toasting its very own
Bacardi rum.

"We have given instructions for our industry to start producing Bacardi,
because it is ours and is better than what they produce," Castro said in a
speech broadcast on Cuban television earlier this week.

A spokesman for Bacardi and Co. was unavailable for comment and did not
return several calls.

This is not the first time Castro and the Bacardi family have locked horns
over a round of rum.

Like most tussles between Castro's Administration and Cuban exiles, Bacardi
and Co.'s rum wars go back in history.

A Glorious, Colonial Past

Founded in the 1862 by Don Facundo Bacardi Masso, a Spanish Catalonian
immigrant in the colonial city of Santiago de Cuba, the company specialized
in distilling some of the world's first exquisitely light rums earning Don
Facundo's family enterprise the title of "los maestros del ron" or "the
masters of rum."

During the 1920s and the 1930s, the business kept apace with the wealth and
flamboyance of Bacardi family members as Don Facundo's heirs turned
themselves into the toast of Santiago society.

Bacardi family parties boasted guests from all over the world and the
family's philanthropic projects included Cuba's first museum.

But the good ol' Cuban days ended in 1960 when the Cuban government seized
the family distilleries following the revolution and Castro's ouster of
General Fulgencio Batista.

Battles From a Distance

Since their exile, the Bacardi family has based its operations in Bermuda,
but that has not been the end of their disputes with Castro's regime.

In 1994, Castro took the first shot when Cuba began manufacturing and
exporting Havana Club rum.

Bacardi and Co. retaliated the next year when they bought the rights to
Havana Club from the Arechabala family, the original Cuban owner that
manufactured Havana Club rum until the Cuban government seized the family
their distillery in 1960.

Although the Cuban trade embargo protects Bacardi and Co.'s operations in
the U.S., the company has been unable to stop the Cuban government from
turning Havana Club into its top rum export brand.

Since 1994, the Cuban government has exported 38 million bottles of the rum
worldwide mainly to Europe, Canada, and Mexico.

Although the embargo prohibits Cuba from selling its rum in the U.S., the
real goal of the trademark dispute is protecting future distribution rights
if and when the embargo is lifted.

In the past, the Cuba government has threatened to stop protecting the
trademarks of several U.S. companies, from Coca-Cola to McDonald's, but it
hasn't done so.


http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/abc/20010323/wl/cuba010323_bacardi_1.html