Rich Energy

[Richard C]

So Rich Energy as a sponsor for Haas was a topic of conversation in the 2019 pre-season thread (and felt reviving that thread was the wrong place to talk about current events.) If I remember correctly, I don't think anyone had much good to say other than if you want to appear to be a big fish, F1 sponsorship is one way to go about it!

One topic of discuss was the impending court battle between Rich Energy and Whyte Bike regarding the "stag" logo. In which... both companies use nearly identical logos. I think to most anyone it's obvious that one copied it from the other. The question is who is in the wrong. Apparently Whyte won the case...

https://us.motorsport.com/f1/news/ha...-case/4388423/

Each company has their opinion on the ruling...

https://whyte.bike/pages/stag

https://twitter.com/rich_energy/stat...09045050388481

You can find the ruling here...

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/01...00235.pdf?2319

I have scanned through the ruling. There is one particularly juicy detail that falls in line with earlier commentary about nobody seeing Rich Energy product in stores, but yet Rich Energy talks about the quantities produced...

For example, when Mr Wyand in cross-examination tried to understand his evidence about the sales figures of Rich Energy drinks, and put to him that he had been quoted in the press in February 2019 as saying that the First Defendant had produced 90 million cans, Mr Storey explained that it had produced 90 million cans, but had not yet filled and sold them.

In short... they have produced a bunch of empty cans and put their logo on an F1 car, but that might be about all. Well... at least some of them have been filled as you occasionally see people talking about having actually found the product.

I am not an attorney and the judgement document is large. But it sounds like Rich Energy (really Storey and his childhood friend who co-designed the logo) lost, there might (?) be an injunction against usage of the logo (remove from Haas???) and have lost their trademark on the logo (Rich has acquired a trademark on the copied logo)

It appears an appeal can be lodged, but Rich hasn't said if they will or will not do that.

Richard