Famous-marks doctrine

The famous-marks doctrine is the idea that a foreign trademark that is already well known to consumers in a country can be protected there even if the owner has never sold the product there. Cubatabaco relied on this argument in the New York Cohiba case. In 2004 a district court accepted it; in 2005 the Second Circuit reversed on embargo grounds and did not decide whether U.S. law recognizes the doctrine. See Cohiba vs. Cohiba.