Cuban Economy

U.S. widens the way for the theft of Cuban trademarks

U.S. widens the way for the theft of Cuban trademarks

Statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Author:  | internet@granma.cu

december 11, 2024 10:12:33

cubaminrex1
Photo: Cubaminrex

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejects in the most categorical terms the so-called “Act not to recognize stolen trademarks in the United States” recently signed by the President of the United States, promoted by the anti-Cuban sectors in the U.S. Congress and consisting of a new unilateral coercive measure, which reinforces the blockade against the Cuban economy. It broadens the scope of section 211 of the Appropriations Act for fiscal year 1999, which, according to the Dispute Settlement Body of the World Trade Organization, violates the international system for the protection of intellectual property.

This law deals a new blow to the international system of industrial property protection and confirms the contempt of the United States for the institutions of international law, in particular, the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property and the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property.

The “Law for not recognizing stolen trademarks in the United States” provides a patent of corse that widens the way to consolidate the theft of Cuban trademarks legitimately registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

The attitude of the U.S. government contrasts with that of the Cuban authorities, which have always acted in strict compliance with the international conventions on intellectual property to which Cuba and the United States are parties. Currently, 6,448 U.S. trademarks are registered and protected in Cuba.

Once again, the U.S. Government is giving space to the dark interests of the most aggressive anti-Cuban sectors, whose manipulation of the U.S. political system has become a practice. The same happened in 1996, when the infamous colonial Helms-Burton Act was passed, which some also called the Bacardi Act. With great participation in the drafting of the Helms-Burton Act and the so-called Section 211, Bacardi shares the responsibility for the suffering imposed on Cuba by those who do not accept the course of independence and sovereignty chosen by the Cuban people.

Havana, December 10, 2024

Fidel Castro Ruz

To the nation’s heroes, honor and glory!

To the nation’s heroes, honor and glory!

Díaz-Canel laid bouquets of flowers in front of the monuments of José Martí, Fidel Castro, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes and Mariana Grajales, in the Santa Ifigenia patrimonial cemetery

Author:  | internet@granma.cu

december 10, 2024 09:12:19

To the nation's heroes, honor and glory!
Photo: Luis Alberto Portuondo

Santiago de Cuba.— The intense working day of the leadership of the Communist Party of Cuba yesterday was marked by the commitment with the Homeland. When a soft wind was blowing the plumes of palms of the Santa Ifigenia patrimonial cemetery, the First Secretary of the Central Committee and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, placed a bouquet of flowers in front of the monolith that treasures the ashes of Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro Ruz.

Accompanied by the member of the Political Bureau and Secretary of Organization, Roberto Morales Ojeda, the president also honored José Martí, National Hero; Carlos Manuel de Céspedes and Mariana Grajales, Father and Mother of the Homeland, as a token of the continuity of the only Cuban Revolution, which began on October 10, 1868.

Díaz-Canel went to the cemetery, National Monument, where some one hundred thousand Santiago inhabitants, representing the Cuban people, made a pilgrimage last December 4, on the eighth anniversary of the deposit of the ashes of our historic leader. Previously, he had evaluated the socio-economic situation of the municipalities of the provinces of Guantánamo and Santiago de Cuba, as well as the progress of the recovery of San Antonio del Sur, after the attacks of hurricane Oscar.

Genocide

The word genocide is not enough to describe certain things

We already know

When today at least a moment is dedicated to commemorate and dignify the victims of genocide, to “think” about how to prevent it, it seems better to invoke all those resistances that confront it

Author:  | internet@granma.cu

december 9, 2024 09:12:09

We already know
Photo: Illustrative

There are those who want to dedicate one day of the year to what takes lifelong struggles. There are those who want to wash their conscience with symbolic and isolated acts that generate commemorative postcards, easy to post on WhatsApp stories.

The word genocide is not enough to describe certain things, certain historical and tremendous traumas, from which most of us come from.

Genocide, according to the academy of language, is the systematic extermination or elimination of a human group because of race, ethnicity, religion, politics or nationality. But it has always had a little more behind it than it says, because race and ethnicity invented it, religion and politics manipulate it and nationality prostitute it.

We already know who they are, we know the smell of how they look and the dull spectrum their planes make when they launch themselves to break the sound barrier and a few other barriers.

We already know how they talk, that there are words that they repeat a lot and others that they never mention, that they love to throw around blame and responsibility, that they change the subject quickly, that they can do it, they have what they need.

Genocide… What do they think we mean by people being killed? A common crime that is erased with three days of crying, four months of pain and a hundred wakes?

We already know that it is not only our bodies that hinder them: they also have more than enough of the full, distinct and rich freedom of our sensibilities, the willingness to pledge our words and our lives in function of our words and our lives, the other ways of saying how a people is organized or where and for what or for whom wealth is placed, the “I don’t feel like it” similar to the priceless tantrum….

This December 9th, a day in which a large part of the world dedicates at least a moment to commemorate and dignify the victims of genocide, to “think” about how to prevent it, it seems better to us to invoke all those resistances that confront it.

The daily ones that even they themselves do not know they exist, the past ones, the high-flown ones, those who know how to cry, those who prefer to save their tears for later, the silent ones, the future ones, those who assume, as the poet said, “that all the words with which I sing to life come with death as well.”