Categories
· Cross-Border/Crime
· Patents/Trademarks
non-USA, by Country
· Montenegro
· Yugoslavia
· Serbia
· Monaco
Organizations
· JTI
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What looks like a brazen case of corporate identity theft has Japan Tobacco battling shadowy Eastern European upstarts for rights to a cigarette brand
Jump to full article: Los Angeles Times, 2004-02-15
Author: Myron Levin, Times Staff Writer
Intro: The haul: nearly 140 million cigarettes, exceeding the largest seizures known to the World Customs Organization.
Follow-up investigations by Japan Tobacco revealed that hundreds of millions of knock-off Monte Carlos already were in the market. The mysterious JTI and its affiliates had procured cigarettes from factories in Greece, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Dubai, United Arab Emirates. They had obtained perfect copies of Monte Carlo packaging from a printer in Milan, Italy. . .
the people behind the JTI sound-alikes had persuaded the federal Intellectual Property Office in Belgrade to declare them owners of the Monte Carlo trademark. . . .
A legal battle quickly ensued. Some 20 lawsuits have been filed in at least four countries, and a criminal investigation of the circumstances surrounding the trademark ruling is underway in Belgrade.
If upheld, the Monte Carlo trademark ruling would give the sound-alikes control of a popular brand in the smokers' paradise of Serbia and Montenegro, as the former Yugoslavia now is called. These Monte Carlos also could leak across borders through exports, legal or otherwise, costing Japan Tobacco sales in other countries.
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