Cuban tobacco by mostly Cuban workers in the United States. The third is the duplicate brands created by Cuban exiles and the trademarks appropriated by United States Manufacturers. This phenomenon is not unique to the United States. There are currently at least 17 cigar brands being produced both by Cubatabaco in Cuba and completely unrelated non-Cuban manufacturers abroad, including such premium marques as Cohiba, Montecristo, Partagás, and H. Upmann. Cuba's main exporter to Europe, Altadis, owns one of the companies producing these duplicate Cuban cigars, Consolidated Cigar Co. Outside of the West, Indonesia has periodically presented competition for Cuba in the form of higher tobacco production, and has been hailed as a "tobacco Mecca". The global rise of health concerns pertaining to smoking have impacted the cigar market less severely than the cigarette market, but it has made a visible impact on demand. In response, in the mid-2000s Cuba attempted to develop a less harmful tobacco, dubbed IT-2004. Patent disputes and the Culbro/General Cigar vs. Cubatabaco lawsuit The United States embargo and the nationalization of private property caused many Cuban cigar producers to flee abroad, taking their seed, technique, and trademarks with them. While Cuba argues that it nationalized the trademarks when it nationalized the companies, the legal basis for this claim was, and remains, in question. Cubatabaco continued production under the various names that it had coopted, while abroad, the exiled Cuban producers did the same, particularly in the United States and the Dominican Republic, advertising "Cuban cigars" that, while not originating in Cuba, are ostensibly made by Cubans in the Cuban tradition. In 1981, Culbro LLC registered Cohiba as its own trademark, transferring that trademark in 1987 to General Cigar Company, which they owned. Under United States common law, if one sells a product under a patent name, one takes de facto ownership of that patent. If an international company wants to register a trademark as their own in the United States, they must register the intellectual property with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Due in part to the embargo and in part to the sour Cold-War relations between the United States and Cuba, these registration negotiations never took place. Ten years after the trademark transfer between Culbro and General Cigar, Cubatabaco petitioned the USPTO to stop General Cigar from advertising, claiming the company was hurting Cubatabaco's brand reputation. In response to this dispute, two