Cigar News
Tatuaje and Altadis settle lawsuits
Date: 11/22/2009
Author: Cigar Inspector
Author: Cigar Inspector
According to a CA article, Altadis and Tatuaje settled all of their lawsuits. A confidential (and I wonder how mutually beneficial) agreement was made and Pete Johnson said that he would be making “minor changes” to some of his cigars. Does this mean that he’ll remove the Fleur de Lys? All we can do is wait and see.
4 thoughts on “Tatuaje and Altadis settle lawsuits”
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@skynnyrd
Thanks for doing the research. This is some valuable information.
I did a little research since my last post, to identify the black and gold banded cigar, with the huge letter X. I even dug around in my humidors ’til I found my one extant “Boomer” (robusto).
According to what I found out, these cigars were none other than EO’s first foray into the cigar biz with a four-size line called, get this, “Series X”. Yup. My sources also say it was manufactured by Oliva and, so the story goes, when “Series X” was abruptly terminated, the remaining inventories on hand were sold (unbanded) under another name. The band on my “Boomer” confirms it to be an EO product, “EO Long Filler Hecho a Mano”. No other information (besides a big-a “X” flanked by curly dingbats) is on the band.
I never understood why Tatuaje put the fleur de lis emblem on their cigars in the first place. Frankly, I’m surprised that it took Altadis this long to sue. I also don’t see why they put a fleur de lis emblem on their own Primo del Rey brand, or if it wasn’t their brand originally, why they didn’t intervene there, too.
Remember the cigar with a black and gold band and huge letter X in the center? Didn’t Fuente get the courts to force the makers of that cigar remove the X? If an alphabet is a trademark, why isn’t a fleur de lis? Don’t even get me started on the name Cohiba, or the ridiculous Siglo bands and packaging.
Mondavi Wines sued Fuente over the use of the word opus. Fuente sued the black and gold guys over the use of the letter X. Altadis sued Tatuaje over the use of the fleur de lis. What’s next, a suit over the use of size designations like: number 1, number 2, number 4, …? Isn’t there any room for common sense in the business world? Can’t cigar makers come up with their own trademarks? Can’t the fleur de lis mean Montecristo? And ONLY Montecristo!
Huzzah! Um, I think…. right?