Jaguar Land Rover has raided the offices of BYD, accusing the Chinese car giant of copying the design of its best-selling Defender. Bailiffs seized documents from the firm’s Dutch premises as a legal fight between the two carmakers escalates.
The court-ordered seizure, first reported by The Sunday Times, saw bailiffs take records from BYD’s offices in the Dutch towns of Schiedam and Hoofddorp over the summer. This week a court in The Hague is expected to rule on procedural parts of the case, including which of those documents JLR may use and whether the action can go ahead at all.
At the heart of the row is the BYD Ti7, a boxy 4×4 billed as China’s answer to the Defender. The plug-in hybrid goes on sale in January at £47,995, more than £20,000 cheaper than the equivalent seven-seater Defender. JLR wants to show that BYD set out to copy the Defender’s design rather than simply build a similar-looking car, and ultimately to keep the Ti7 off the European market, though the case will not be settled before the vehicle reaches showrooms.
Both sides are saying little in public. A JLR spokesman said the company “does not comment on ongoing legal proceedings”, while BYD said it would not comment on an ongoing legal matter. At an earlier hearing in The Hague last month, BYD reportedly dismissed the records grab as a “fishing expedition”. The battle is being fought in the Netherlands, which is regarded as having strong intellectual property laws.
A British icon under pressure
The Defender is Land Rover’s best-known model, its upright, slab-sided shape tracing back to 1948 and a civilian design inspired by the wartime Jeep. Production ended in 2016 before the badge was revived three years later, and JLR, now owned by India’s Tata Motors, has guarded the look closely ever since.
The legal push comes as Chinese brands pile pressure on Britain’s carmakers. They now account for almost a quarter of new cars sold in the UK, and BYD alone, the world’s biggest seller of electric vehicles, has seen its British sales jump by 80 per cent in a year to more than one in 20 cars sold here.
There is interest in JLR’s own marques, too. The chairman of the Chinese giant Chery, Yin Tongyue, told The Sunday Times he wanted his firm to become “more of a British brand” and hinted that he could try to buy Jaguar. Chery already licenses JLR’s Freelander name, and its Jaecoo arm makes the Jaecoo 7, nicknamed the “Temu Range Rover”, which was Britain’s best-selling car last month.
For drivers the upshot is a wave of cheaper, Defender-style off-roaders arriving whatever the judges decide, with plenty more UK business and motoring news to come as the dispute runs its course. The Ti7 still reaches British showrooms in January, and whether it stays there is now a question for a courtroom in The Hague.
