Josh Kesselman, founder of HBI Innovations, issued a statement about the April 25th ruling in favor of HBI in its nine-year court battle against Republic Tobacco. HBI Innovations is the independent provider of high-quality rolling papers and smoking innovations, widely known for its RAW® brand of rolling papers.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit rejected Republic Tobacco’s attempt to overturn the June 2021 jury verdict finding that Republic/OCB illegally copied the trade-dress packaging design HBI uses for its RAW ® Organic Hemp rolling paper products and infringed the copyright-protected design of RAW ® advertising. The Court’s April 25th ruling affirmed the jury’s verdict that Republic willfully copied RAW’s trade dress and ad design for its OCB ® Organic Hemp products.
The similarity of the companies’ trade dress was shown by, among other things, the following three trial exhibits:
Trial Exhibit
Trial Exhibit
Trial Exhibit
In HBI’s statement on the ruling, Kesselman noted that all of the net award proceeds – totaling in the high six figures – were donated through the RAW Giving initiative to various charitable groups from social justice organizations to animal rescues with a goal of helping uplift people that were negatively impacted by cannabis laws.
The RAW Giving initiative represents the charitable efforts of Josh Kesselman and HBI Innovations. Through this initiative the company has donated more than $3,000,000 in direct cash contributions, plus in-kind contributions of about $200,000, to a wide variety of charities and causes, including clean water, animal rescue, reforestation, and more.
“As we’ve said in the past, our industry benefits when companies in this industry empathetically connect with their customers and truly understand their needs” said Josh Kesselman, founder of HBI, in response to the ruling. “We hope this ruling helps Republic recognize that its litigation assault was a waste of everyone’s time and money. True innovation benefits us all. We can do better for our industry by helping those pioneers who are struggling to compete in the legal marketplace. WE ALL GET HIGHER TOGETHER!”
“RAW is here to stay, we love what we do and there is no amount of money they could offer us that we would trade this love and passion for. Large mega-corporations often try to buy out competitors or sue them into submission, but we survived the gauntlet and are stronger and wiser for having gone through it.” Kesselman stated.
Read more about the trial and previously entered judgment here.
Written in partnership with Tom White
