PIJIP Faculty Director Christine Haight Farley has written a guest post for the TTABlog, which reports cases heard by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB).

She describes a recent decision by the TTAB to cancel two U.S. trademark registrations for COHIBA cigars. The trademark was challenged by Empresa Cubana Del Tabaco d.b.a. Cubatabaco, which owns a Cuban trademark for COHIBA and sells cigars under the trademark worldwide - except not in the U.S. due to the embargo.  

Farley explains that "the basis of the TTAB’s cancellation was the substantive provisions of the 1929 General Inter-American Convention for Trademarks and Commercial Protection, referred to as 'the Pan American Convention' by the TTAB. In particular, the TTAB ruled that the registrations were a violation of Article 8 of the convention, which provides the right to cancel the registration of a conflicting by a party that has priority for the same mark in another member state when the registrant had knowledge of the petitioner’s prior right. That is, the owner of a trademark right in another country that has neither used the mark nor applied for registration in the U.S., can cancel a subsequent trademark registration in the U.S. if it can show that the registrant knew of its mark."

Click here to read the full blog.