of the US embargo against Cuba, refused to stop Bacardi & Co. from selling Bahamian-produced "Havana Club'' rum in the US.

The justices, acting without comment yesterday, rejected an appeal in which a Cuban rum manufacturer, Havana Club Holding, argued that Bacardi, which has its international base in Bermuda, is violating US 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 US 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 US 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 US 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.

It 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 US courts from enforcing any treaty rights for Cuba-related trademarks -- another reason cited by a federal trial judge in New York and the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in dismissing the Cuban company's lawsuit.

The appeal acted yesterday 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 and the Organisation for International Investment.

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.

The case is Havana Club Holding v. Bacardi & Co., 99-1957.

On the Net: For the appeals court ruling: http://www.uscourts.gov/links.html and click on 2nd Circuit.