The battle for Grand Prix glory is often settled not only by the waving of the chequered flag but the banging of a gavel. Increasingly the battle lines are moving from grid to court rooms as stakes are raised ever higher.

Commercial interests are often at conflict with the best interests of the sport and its participants. There are countless examples such as Flavio Briatore having his ban from Formula One overturned by a European Court.

The Italian was found guilty of race fixing when Nelson Piquet spun out of the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix. It handed Fernando Alonso the win, a point which, in the eyes of some, has never been amended.

Briatore was heavily involved in driver management at the time. A ban from Formula One had commercial impacts on him and so he appealed. The decision was overturned and though Flavio has not reappeared in Formula One he still gets occasional column inches from quote-hungry journalists.

Also settled in court was the curious case of Lotus. It dragged on for two seasons and today we have a team known as Lotus which is unconnected to either of the entities which have previously raced under that banner. Whatever the rights or wrongs of the situation, and they've been well documented by Pitpass, it remains that a ferocious battle ensued in court rather than on the race track. The only winners out of that situation were the lawyers - everyone else has been left constantly clarifying exactly which Lotus we're referring to.

Squabbling of any sort in modern Formula One does little but make the legal minds involved a lot of money. A case in point is Force India which, if it had ignored legal advice, would possibly have ended up better off for it.

Last week the Silverstone-based team won a court settlement from an Italian design company called Aerolab which was previously a contractor to it. The case surrounded the use of Force India's intellectual property with Aerolab's next client, 1 Malaysia - the parent company for what is now the Caterham Formula One Team. Aerolab terminated its contract with Force India after the team failed to settle debts of €846,230 in July 2009.

Almost immediately after Aerolab stopped working for Force India it began working for Caterham. At the time the company was known as Litespeed, before becoming Lotus Racing, Team Lotus and ultimately Caterham - more evidence that there are too many lawyers in Formula One.

Aerolab began legal proceedings against Force India, starting out by trying to have its cars seized at the 2009 Italian Grand Prix. Force India was required to post €1,074,730 worth of security which was held until the recent court proceedings finished, and enabled the team to race.

The situation between Aerolab and Force India muddied when Caterham released a photo of its 2010 car in October 2009, back then known as a Lotus. It showed Force India's wheels and some parts which looked suspiciously like those the team had run earlier in the season on a 50% scale wind tunnel model of the new Lotus.