Force India charges Lotus F1 for copying their designs
It is Lotus F1 again which has found a way back into the world of news and legal issues! This time round, the Lotus team has cooked up some mess with The Force India team. Force India is a Formula One team that has accused Lotus for copying its designs as Lotus has built its new car. The Vijay Mallya’s formula one is all ready to talk with fire against the Lotus F1 team as they accuse them for copying their Wind tunnel system in a court of law. Help is flowing in from the previous designer of Force India who will assist in catching the culprits.
Lotus, a rival manufacturing company of Force India filed a case for legal action against Lotus' parent companies in Britain's High Court. Also, legal proceedings have been launched against Michael Gascoyne, the Force India designer along with Italian wind tunnel manufacturer Aerolab.
The charge on Lotus is that it had breached the rules of intellectual property, moreover, it has had unauthorised access to the components and tyres that had been exclusively licensed to Force India by Bridgestone.
Force India told on Wednesday that they have all the supporting evidences that would be required for the proceedings. Otherwise, why would they go to such an extent? Force India told that the claims they have made are very serious and they have done all the basic inquiry at their end before they took the matter to court.
The team also confirmed that it had also filed legal action against Aerolab in Italy, last December. They accused Aerolab, a laboratory of Wind tunnel that helped steal their 2009 Wind tunnel model last year.
Mike Gascoyne had worked with Force India as their technical director before he was hired by the Lotus F1. Force India believes that their previous technical chief, with the help of Aerolab personnel have been able to secure the blue print of their VJM3 model.
For Lotus F1, this is another bad patch in their already poor season of 2010. Currently, they will have to undergo a lot of legal hassle. Anyhow, Mike Gascoyne is the only one to be blamed for the scandal. The Lotus authorities that include some conglomerates of Malaysian Entrepreneurs and the Malaysian Government have held all the claims as being rubbish. Lotus has replied against the charges of their Indian counterparts by saying that the yet to be launched model is merely a product of the amalgam of ideas from Mike Gascoyne and the technical partners of the team. He told that it only presents an important step for the preparations that the team is making for the upcoming season.
However, when asked about the matter, the managing director of Aerolab Jean-Claude Migeot said that generally, they do not comment on negative matters but they were now left with no other choice but to put the facts straight in front of the public. He added that they had already told in their press reports that Aerolab has not at all been involved in passing any information to any company at all. Migeot added that these were all pre-planned rumours only designed to damage the company's reputation and professional image that they had tried to maintain for long in order to divert the attention of the people away from hard core facts.
Moreover, Force India added their statement regarding the whole issue saying that any action between Aerolab and Force India for the termination of contract would now be addressed by the courts. It also confirmed that it had already paid around a million Euros in autumn 2009 to Aerolab and that anything from now onwards would be decided by the courts.
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