Rob Sequin | Havana Journal

As cigar aficionados know, Altadis and General Cigar have been fighting a lengthy legal battle over the Cohiba brand that is being documented at our sister site, Cohibas.com.

Days ago General Cigar appears to have made a strategic move to expand its ownership and use of the disputed trademark names with Cuba keyword domain name registrations.

On June 30, 2010 General Cigar registered dozens of Cuban cigar brand domain names, apparently for it’s own marketing or trademark defense purposes.

The company registered domain names such as bolivar-havana.com, cohiba-habana.com and montecristohabana.com.

The registrations are for five years and has the “whois” registrant information listed as:

General Cigar

7300 Beaufont Springs Drive

Richmond, Virginia 23225

Cuban Brand Trademarks

In the mid 1970’s General Cigar purchased of the U.S. rights to the Partagas brand from the Ramon CifuentesРІР‚в„ў family, makers of Partagas in Cuba until Castro took over.

In 1981, General Cigar received the rights to the US trademark of the Cohiba brand. Today these are known as “red dot” Cohibas and not to be confused with the real Cohibas made in Cuba.

In 1997 the company acquired Villazon & Company which was producing the Punch and Hoyo de Monterrey brands.

When Swedish Match acquired General Cigar as a wholly owned subsidiary in 2005, La Gloria Cubana brand became part of the family.

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