Force India’s court case against Team Lotus to be heard in January 2012 – Formula 1 news
Force India’s court case against Aerolab and Team Lotus will not be heard until January 2012.
Force India submitted this case after Aerolab built a similar wind-tunnel model for Team Lotus as compared to the one they built for Force India.
Team Force India claims that there was an Intellectual Property Infringement as a result of which the team decided to start proceedings against Team Lotus’ parent company, its boss Mike Gascoyne and Aerolab.
Gascoyne denied that the team plagiarised their wind-tunnel design while Aerolab issued a statement blaming Force India over non-payment of outstanding bills.
“Separate criminal proceedings are currently ongoing in Italy in respect of the wrongful disclosure of confidential information, as a consequence of the filing by Force India F1 Team Ltd. of a complaint with the competent authorities. In respect of these
proceedings, articles in the Italian press have recently revealed that Tony Fernandes, Mike Gascoyne and Jean Claude Migeot have been formally charged,” a press release from Force India said.
Team Lotus have been going through a lot of problems out of which their case with Group Lotus stands out.
The problem between Group Lotus and Team Lotus over the copyrights issues over the name Lotus was quite big but it seems that this was more like a ‘publicity stunt’ later on as the matter reached its peak near the beginning of February 2011.
Reports suggest that both of the teams decided to take this matter to the court in January after the 2010 season came to an end but even then, both of the parties kept giving a variety of statements which made it seem like they were now using this problem
for the sole purpose of publicity together.
For example, at first Group Lotus claimed that they are going to take this matter to the court but later on decided to state that they want to clear this matter out of the court if Team Lotus cooperates.
Similar is the case with Team Lotus but since Group Lotus and Team Lotus are expected to meet once again in the court this month, it is believed that at least this matter would be resolved soon while their court session with Force India will take place in
the beginning of 2012.
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