“PIRATES OF THE 21st CENTURY”.
By Sergio Martínez González.
Ambassador of the Republic of Cuba in Antigua and Barbuda.
As children, we watched the movies and read the so-called adventure comics about the battles and practices of pirates and corsairs in our region who, several centuries ago, attacked ships on the high seas or assaulted cities, seizing everything within their reach with force and brutality. No one could imagine that in the middle of the 21st century in which we live, shameful piracy practices would once again be used by governments to deprive smaller countries of their goods, resources and products that are the undisputed property of those peoples.
On December 10, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba issued a statement denouncing the most recent law approved by the US Congress and signed by the country's President Joe Biden, which provides a so call “legal framework”, to consolidate the theft of Cuban trademarks legitimately registered in the US Patent and Trademark Office. As noted, this law is a new blow to the international system of protection of industrial property and confirms the United States' disregard for the institutions of international law, in particular, the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights and the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property.
The attitude of the US government contrasts with that of the Cuban authorities, who have always acted in strict compliance with the international conventions on intellectual property to which Cuba and the United States are party. Currently, 6,448 US trademarks are registered and protected in Cuba.
The US government has made the theft of goods and properties from countries that do not submit to its designs a common practice within its aggressive and hostile policy against these countries. As part of its genocidal and inhuman economic war that the US has promoted for more than six decades against the Cuban people, the different North American Administrations have deprived Cuba of millions of dollars belonging to the largest country of the Antilles for the payment of numerous services provided by Cuba, such as telephone communications. From the people of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, around 22 billion USD have also been “confiscated” (in reality stolen) with the greatest impunity, and companies such as CITGO estimated at a value of 13 billion USD.
Once again, with the approval of this new law against Cuba, the United States government is giving space to the petty interests of the most aggressive anti-Cuban sectors whose manipulation of the American political system has become common practice. Behind this new anti-Cuban monstrosity, is the old effort of companies like Bacardi that cannot compete fairly in international markets (not even in the US market itself if it were allowed) with the quality of Cuban products such as the renowned Havana Club Rum. The same thing happened in 1996, when the infamous and colonial Helms-Burton Act was approved, which some also called the Bacardi Act, due to the active and direct role played by this company in favor of this legislative monstrosity. As indicated by the complaint formulated by Cuba, Bacardi irrefutably shares the responsibility for the suffering imposed on Cuba by the US Government, and all those who do not accept the path of independence and sovereignty chosen by the Cuban people.