Abstract:
The intellectual property dispute between Jaguar Land Rover and BYD Ti7 ushered in a key procedural ruling. The Hague Court of the Netherlands officially rejected Jaguar Land Rover's application for evidence preservation and disagreed with its request to conduct a raid on BYD-related office materials and obtain internal research and development documents.
Jaguar Land Rover has reportedly suffered its first defeat in a legal battle against BYD, with a Dutch court ordering the British carmaker to destroy information belonging to Chinese rival BYD it obtained during proceedings accusing the other party of "plagiarism."
The Hague Court made the ruling at a hearing on Wednesday. This is just the first step in the entire judicial process, which will further determine whether BYD copied the design of the Jaguar Land Rover "Defender" off-road vehicle when building its new Ti7 SUV. The Ti7 SUV is scheduled to go on sale in the UK in January 2027.
Jaguar Land Rover previously filed a lawsuit in The Hague Court, accusing BYD of "infringing the design rights of the Defender model"; it also filed a lawsuit in the Rotterdam court, accusing the other party of "copyright infringement" and "blind plagiarism of the Defender model." However, this first court hearing was initiated by BYD.
During the trial in the Netherlands, BYD told the presiding judge Hugo van Heemstra that Jaguar Land Rover's retrieval of seized documents and materials from its Dutch office was an "untargeted and large-scale evidence search" and went beyond the scope of the investigation into the "plagiarism" accusation.
The judge supported BYD's claim on this point, ruling that the evidence obtained by Jaguar Land Rover during a raid on BYD's European headquarters in August was not related to the charges in this case (i.e., the accusation of "plagiarism").
The court has ordered Jaguar Land Rover to destroy evidence obtained from BYD's premises or return it to BYD within 24 hours. If it fails to comply with the requirements, Jaguar Land Rover will face a fine of 50,000 euros per hour.
The hearing revealed more details about information obtained by Jaguar Land Rover during a raid on BYD offices in August.
This information includes: details of the launch plan of the Ti7 SUV model, technical data, sensitive financial information related to the model, and any information about the Land Rover Defender stored in BYD's computer system.
Court documents further detailed the search operation: Executives made electronic backups of data in the IT systems of BYD's European and Dutch offices, and made copies of paper documents retained on site.
In addition, there is news that Jaguar Land Rover has tried to seek a fine of 500,000 euros against BYD because BYD failed to cooperate with the evidence seizure order issued by the court.
BYD argued that the scope of the evidence seized by Jaguar Land Rover was too broad and exceeded the scope of the "plagiarism" charge; therefore, BYD should not be liable for the fine claimed by Jaguar Land Rover.
Judge Himstra dismissed Jaguar Land Rover's request to withhold evidence, saying it could not prove that BYD's Ti7 SUV had caused damage to it because the model was not yet available in the EU at the time.
The court also ordered Jaguar Land Rover to pay BYD 25,376.57 euros in legal costs.
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