Josh Kesselman, Founder of HBI Innovations and Raw Rolling Papers Featured in MSN Writeup on Victory at the End of 9-Year Legal Battle

June 24, 2025 at 12:38 PM EDT

New York, New York--(Newsfile Corp. - June 24, 2025) - Josh Kesselman, who founded HBI Innovations, was recently featured in an MSN writeup about the end of HBI's 9-year legal 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. Kesselman founded RAW in 2005.

"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," said Kesselman. "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."

The MSN feature highlights the decision from the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which rejected Republic Tobacco's appeal and upheld the 2021 jury verdict. That ruling found that Republic Tobacco and its OCB® brand had willfully infringed RAW®'s trade dress and advertising design used for their RAW ® Organic Hemp rolling paper products - a key element in RAW's unique brand identity. The Court's ruling affirmed the jury's verdict that Republic willfully replicated RAW ®'s trade dress and ad design for its OCB® Organic Hemp product and that RAW's brand integrity and product design remain protected under copyright law.

MSN's piece outlined HBI's statement on the ruling where Josh 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 MSN article also included trial exhibits that demonstrated the similarity of the companies' trade dress:

Trial Exhibit.