by Cuba, another eight nations and the bloc of 27 making up the European Union (EU).
US rhetoric with regard to violations of agreements adopted by the World Trade Organization (WTO) was condemned by Cuba, another eight nations and the bloc of 27 making up the European Union (EU). In this regard, the Prensa Latina news agency reports that there was a repetition of the same issue of Section 211 of the 1998 Law of Budgetary Allocations, which has facilitated the misappropriation of the famous Cuban Havana Club rum brand by the Bacardi Company in the US market.
Before the WTO’s Organ for the Settlement of Differences (OSD), the counselor of Cuba’s Mission to the international organizations in Geneva, Jorge Ferrer, denounced that the document presented by Washington was a mockery.
Ferrer expressed that the document had no sense and stressed that month after month, for more than six years, the representatives of the White House had repeated exactly the same words, without the least of intentions of approaching the truth. He claimed that Section 211 is still in force and that the legislative projects aimed at abolishing it have not prospered.
The Cuban official recalled that intellectual property rights are private, the main beneficiaries of which are companies from the United States and other developed countries, for being the owners of the overwhelming majority of brands and patents. The assertion of the US media -amid the financial crisis- that the protection of intellectual property rights is key, was characterized as pure rhetoric by the Cuban diplomat .
European Community delegations -representing the 27 members of the EU- and representatives from India, Brazil, China, Thailand, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Venezuela, also criticized Washington’s practices.