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[McLaren]

Force India have been ordered by a High Court judge to pay £650,000 legal costs to the Caterham team and their chief technical officer Mike Gascoyne.
The amount is on top of the £700,000 in fees Force India had to pay Italian race-car design company Aerolab over the same case in March.
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The interim costs payments awarded are more than covered by funds already provided by Sahara Force India as security for costs pending the outcome of the case
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Force India statement
The verdict is to do with a dispute over intellectual property involving Force India, Aerolab and Caterham.
Force India have to pay the £650,000 in costs within 14 days.
The case arose when Aerolab pursued Force India for unpaid fees before Force India accused them and Team Lotus, Caterham's former identity, of misuse of confidential information.
In the trial verdict in March, Force India were awarded £20,900 over use of its intellectual property rights, which the judge said had been used as a "shortcut" to speed up the development of the Team Lotus car for the 2010 season, when they made their debut.
The judge rejected Force India's claim that there had been "systematic copying" of their designs, saying they had "come nowhere near establishing that was the case".
In his costs verdict on Friday, the judge awarded costs on a full indemnity basis to Gascoyne dating from November 2011, which is when his lawyers wrote to Force India's lawyers offering to settle the case. Gascoyne has been awarded costs on a standard basis before that date.
Costs were awarded to Caterham's parent company 1MRT on the same basis.
The judgement brings the total costs to Force India of bringing the case to £1.35m, on top of their own costs.
The judge rejected Force India's claim that costs awarded to 1MRT should be reduced because they had been found guilty of copyright infringement.
Force India said in a statement: "The interim costs payments awarded to Mr Gascoyne and 1 Malaysia Racing in today's ruling are more than covered by funds already provided by Sahara Force India as security for costs pending the outcome of the case."
The team added that the hearing was curtailed and that the judge had delayed a decision on their request for permission to appeal against the 25,000 Euros (£20,270) of damages Aerolab had been ordered to pay in the original case.
That decision is expected later this month.


Source BBC Sport

[vlad]

Well, bad for them, but very good for Caterham, they really need money.

[LewEngBridewell]

I could do with that money.

[What's Burning?]

So if I read this correctly it cost Sahara Force India £1,350,000 to win £20,900 over the intellectual property charge against Caterham and Aerolab?

[mugshot]

What a joke of a legal issue. I understand Force India going in for their copyright infringement....but to get such a small amount and suffer such a legal bill!

[zurich_allan]

So if I read this correctly it cost Sahara Force India £1,350,000 to win £20,900 over the intellectual property charge against Caterham and Aerolab?

No, not quite. It would have cost them substantially less than that if they had chosen to just take out an ordinary IP infringement case. Instead they went beyond trying to use a sledgehammer to crack a nut and went straight to the nuclear warhead. They tried to put together a ridiculously complex case, which in turn forced the defending parties to have to research and put together a defence strategy to those claims. It was pure idiocy from Force India, they shot themselves in the foot by trying to be too greedy with the law, to their own cost. No sympathy whatsoever from me.

[zurich_allan]

What a joke of a legal issue. I understand Force India going in for their copyright infringement....but to get such a small amount and suffer such a legal bill!

But the two aren't linked in that way. They only won a fraction of their case. They had been pressing for various other IP related decisions that they failed to prove, even on the balance of probabilities. Had they won on all of the legal points they put forward they may well have won substantially more than the costs they've incurred. They took the gamble by being greedy thinking the Judge was going to side with them on all of their issues. But it didn't work out like that. They forced the various defending parties to have to put together complex and lengthy defences to defend the (dodgy) points that they raised. They knew what the costs were likely to be and had already ring-fenced them, so they're not really losing anything as it's money that they had realised they were going to be paying out a while ago, so hadn't factored it into their plans.