WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court, skirting a trademark dispute
                  growing out of the U.S. embargo against Cuba, refused to stop Bacardi and Co.
                  from selling Bahamian-produced "Havana Club" rum in the United States.

                  The justices, acting without comment Monday, rejected an appeal in which a
                  Cuban rum manufacturer, Havana Club Holding, argued that Bacardi is violating
                  U.S. and international trademark law.

                  Lower courts threw out Havana Club Holding's 1996 lawsuit after concluding
                  that the Cuban company was barred from enforcing any trademark in the United
                  States because of the Cuban trade embargo _ the U.S. government's policy of
                  prohibiting commercial ties with Fidel Castro's communist regime.

                  The lower courts also rejected the company's contentions that Bacardi had
                  violated an international trademark treaty and engaged in unfair competition.

                  Since 1994, Havana Club Holding has sold more than 38 million bottles of
                  "Havana Club" rum around the world. The company's lawyers told the justices
                  that it intends to export the rum to the United States whenever the U.S. embargo
                  is lifted.

                  In 1995, Bacardi began producing rum manufactured in the Bahamas and
                  marketing it under the "Havana Club" name.

                  Havana Club Holding's lawsuit alleged that Bacardi did so to prevent the Cuban
                  company from cutting into its lucrative U.S. market if the embargo is lifted.
                  Bacardi's strategy, the lawsuit contended, was to prevent the Cuban company
                  from marketing its rum in this country under a name that had been marketed
                  successfully abroad.

                  The lawsuit accused Bacardi of violating federal trademark law and a treaty, the
                  General Inter-American Convention for Trade Mark and Commercial Protection.

                  But Congress in 1998 enacted a law that bars U.S. courts from enforcing any
                  treaty rights for Cuba-related trademarks -- another reason cited by a federal trial
                  judge in New York and the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in dismissing the
                  Cuban company's lawsuit.

                  The appeal acted on Monday said the result carries "profound and adverse
                  consequences to the United States' foreign relations, and to the intellectual
                  property protections of Americans abroad."

                  This country's reluctance to uphold worldwide trademark rights will spark other
                  nations to disregard Americans' trademark rights, the appeal said.

                  The Cuban company's appeal was supported in friend-of-the-court briefs
                  submitted by the French National Committee of the International Chamber of
                  Commerce, the Organization for International Investment, and the
                  European-American Business Council.

                  Lawyers for Bacardi urged the court to reject the appeal. They said Cuban rights
                  to the Havana Club brand of rum were confiscated by Castro's regime in 1960
                  from a family-owned business that subsequently sold its trademark rights to
                  Bacardi.

                  Copyright 2000 The Associated Press.