BYD's Dutch offices raided over JLR 'copycat car' claim

Bailiffs acting for Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) have raided the Dutch offices of Chinese carmaker BYD, ahead of a court hearing this week over claims that its vehicle is a copy of the Land Rover Defender and infringes intellectual property rights.

According to the Sunday Times, bailiffs seized digital records from BYD's offices in Schiedam and Hoofddorp in August.

A court in The Hague will hear the case this week and decide whether BYD has a case to answer over allegations that its Ti7 SUV infringes the intellectual property of the Land Rover Defender.

Motoring experts have likened BYD's seven-seat plug-in hybrid SUV to the Defender since it went on sale in China in September last year. The BBC's Top Gear magazine called the vehicle the Chinese Defender clone.

The car is scheduled to launch in the UK market in January at a price of 47,995 pounds, undercutting the Defender by more than 20,000 pounds.

BYD says on its website that the car's unapologetically boxy profile delivers the imposing, chunky design that finds favour among SUV buyers, yet delivers a contemporary look.

The price of JLR's seven-seat Defender 110 starts from 68,465 pounds, and it is one of the country's bestselling cars. The UK-based carmaker, which is owned by India's Tata Motors, sold 29,500 Defenders to retail customers between July and September this year, compared with 25,370 a year earlier.

The Times reported that the raid in the Netherlands was carried out by court-ordered bailiffs, with JLR suspecting that BYD had reverse-engineered some of the technology used in the Ti7. JLR wanted to secure the digital records before they could be destroyed.

JLR and BYD both declined to comment on the ongoing legal proceedings.

The dispute with BYD is not the first legal case JLR has pursued against a Chinese company over copycat allegations. It won a legal case to stop Jiangling Motor Corporation selling a copycat vehicle in 2019 after a three-year court battle.

In some cases JLR has taken a collaborative approach to dealing with the rise of China's carmakers. It agreed to form a joint venture with Chery in a 2012 deal which later included licensing its discontinued Freelander brand with the company.

Chery's Jaecoo model, which is not part of the joint venture, has been called the Temu Range Rover because of its similarities to the JLR vehicle. It costs 10,000 pounds less than the Range Rover. The Jaecoo was the bestselling car in the UK in October, with 10,813 registrations, taking its market share from 2.07 percent to 4.30 percent, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. JLR's sales of the Range Rover fell to 43,300 in the third quarter of this year, from 47,196 cars sold in the same months last year.