In the months after that meeting, S�nchez says that he and other Bacardi lobbyists helped rewrite the bill, together with aides to Senators Mack and Bob Graham and members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. They ditched the idea of amending the Lanham Act and instead focused on the embargo regulations. Mack sponsored the final version and had it attached to the appropriations bill for the Commerce, Justice, and State Departments in October.

Though a Mack spokeswoman insists that “it was not a last-minute insertion” and that members of the relevant committees knew of the measure, others disagree. “It was snuck in there” without any debate and unbeknownst to most members of Congress, says INTA’s Heltzer: “We never had a chance to review it.” Observes Sims: “That was the beauty of S�nchez’s approach.” The statute “this bloody law,” in Pernod general counsel Ch�teauneuf’s preferred designation ended up markedly different from the legislation S�nchez had proposed in the May hearing before the House subcommittee. In its ultimate form, the law avoided entirely the issue of geographic deceptiveness. Instead, it barred U.S. courts from enforcing Cuban trademarks or trade names unless the original owners consented to their use. It also prevented a plaintiff who laid claim to such a name from asserting any treaty rights to it. Now the statute, known as section 211, had HCI’s trade name case fixed in its sights.

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