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I think what is happening, from what I've been able to discern from reading around, is this:
- Team Lotus and Lotus Cars (now part of the Lotus-owned Group Lotus) are separate and have been for 50-odd years - the courts ruled back in the mid 90s, when Lotus Cars tried to win back the rights to the name from David Hunt just after they were bought by Proton from Artioli, that this still stands and that Lotus Cars have no right to it
- David Hunt first agrees to let Litespeed use the Team Lotus name on their application last year, but this failed
- BMW Sauber then don't bother to apply for the 2010 championship when BMW announced they were pulling out. Tony Fernandes likes the idea of resurrecting the Lotus name in F1, phones up Group Lotus and gets them to give him permission for using the Lotus name as Lotus Racing - apparently it was a multi-year deal. He then hires Gascoyne from the failed Litespeed/Team Lotus bid, which had nothing to do with Lotus Racing's bid apart from the designer, and then makes the successful application to enter F1 in place of Sauber
- Lotus Racing then appears with its own individual logo and the Proton name on the side (in small writing, though - have a look). Fernandes and Hunt keep talking, while the Chapman family give the team their blessing and Colin's hat. They also rename the Mofaz World Series by Renault team Lotus Junior and also let Litespeed use the Lotus Racing colours as well, as part of plans to develop a junior programme
- Meanwhile, Dany Bahar, ex-marketing guru of Ferrari and Red Bull, has taken over as head of Group Lotus and brings with him a few guys from Ferrari including Gino Rosato (the fat guy with the beard who used to be Head of Security) and Claudio Berro, who becomes head of Lotus Motorsport
- Bahar sees the impact Lotus Racing has had and obviously has a love of racing himself, so he decides that Group Lotus needs to get back into racing in a proper way, leading to the sponsorship of KV Racing's #4 car driven by Takuma Sato. While initially supporting the Lotus Racing effort, relations go a bit stale with little communication
- Around about the British GP, Group Lotus serve Lotus Racing with a notice of intention to sever the deal to use the Lotus name at the end of the season, meaning Fernandes would have to rename the team. So he gets back in contact with David Hunt and organises the deal to buy the Team Lotus name outright so that he wouldn't have to radically change the name of the team (far from the triumphant "this is the legitimisation of our team as the true successor to Chapman's team" that they pedalled at the time of the announcement - effectively they're being forced into this)
- Lotus Racing also press on with their junior programme by entering GP2. However, Group Lotus have the same idea. Thus when the GP2 entry list for next year was announced, you see the name Team Air Asia - because they've lost the rights to Lotus Racing and because, as announced later, Group Lotus is to sponsor ART Grand Prix. It's quite ironic, then, that Team Air Asia will now use the Team Lotus pit garages during F1 weekends but Lotus ART will use Ferrari's, who Lotus Cars will now be competing with in the sportscar market...
- But there's more - it's believed that Group Lotus are pushing to enter F1 in the future themselves, probably again with ART and allegedly with Toyota Motorsport-built cars (which makes sense as Lotus cars are powered by Toyota engines), but of course there is already a Lotus F1 team. So they're going to try and block Fernandes' team from using the Lotus name so that when they enter they are the Lotus F1 team. However, we all know that back in the 90s, the courts ruled that Team Lotus is separate from Lotus Cars and they have equal rights to use the name and branding
- How is this going to end? Well Fernandes is very powerful in Malaysia and Group Lotus is now headed up by a European who may not know who he's messing with. So I can eventually see Group Lotus throwing support behind Team Lotus in some way, shape or form - they might as well as they are the established outfit who are making progress in the right direction, and they aren't going to win in the courts. It doesn't make sense if they're warring - that'll just damage both sides
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