A decades-long rum war between the Communist Cuban government and Bermudian-based drinks giant Bacardi is to feature on a top US TV news show.

CBS current affairs flagship 60 Minutes will on Sunday examine the fight for control of the Havana Club brand name — which has been running since Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba in 1959 — in a segment called “The Rum War”.

The show’s Sharyn Alfonsi visited Cuba to examine the roots of the row, which is still the subject of long-running legal battles in the US.

In a trailer for the segment, Ms Alfonsi said: “It’s complicated — you need to pull up a seat and make yourself comfortable to try and figure it out.”

The Havana Club trademark originally belonged to Cuban rum-makers Jose Arechabala, whose family company was seized and nationalised after the revolution that deposed hated dictator Fulgencio Batista.

The family left Cuba, stopped producing rum and allowed the US trade mark to lapse in 1973.

The Cuban government registered the trade mark in the US in 1976 and assigned it to French partners Pernod-Ricard in 1993.

Since 1994, Havana Club has been sold around the world, but not in the US.

Bacardi, however, obtained the Arechabala family’s remaining rights to the brand in 1994 and began selling limited amounts of Havana Club in the US, which sparked a legal battle with Pernod Ricard, which was successful in two of the first three court decisions in the matter.

After further legal battles, the Cuban government’s US trademark registration expired in 2006 — but in January, amid a thaw in relations between the US and Cuba, the American government gave Cuba rights to the Havana Club name, a decision Bacardi insists should be reversed.

Bacardi also mounted a major marketing campaign for its version of the brand and maintains that the renewal for Cuba breaches a 1998 Act of the US Congress designed to protect trademarks taken over in the wake of the country’s revolution.

The Bacardi Havana Club, made in Puerto Rico, includes a new bottle and packaging and the introduction of a dark rum variant, Havana Club Anejo Clasico, launched in Florida in the summer.

The brand was launched with a new campaign “The Golden Age, Aged Well” and, in a sideswipe at Cuba, still Communist and now led by Fidel Castro’s brother Raoul, “Even A Revolution Couldn’t Topple the Rum”.

A spokeswoman for Bacardi yesterday confirmed that representatives of the Bacardi and Arechabala families had been interviewed for 60 Minutes.

She added: “Bacardi is the legitimate owner of the brand. No company or government should be able to profit from stolen property.”

The Bacardi family, whose distillery company was founded in Santiago de Cuba in 1862, were also forced to flee Cuba after their assets were also seized and nationalised without compensation.

The company set up its world headquarters in Bermuda a few years later and has become the largest privately held and family owned spirits company in the world.

The 60 Minutes investigation will air on Sunday night. The show starts at 8.30pm Bermuda time.