Court-appointed bailiffs acting for Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) seized digital records from two BYD offices in the Netherlands in August, as the British carmaker builds a case that BYD’s Ti7 SUV copies its Land Rover Defender, The Sunday Times reported on Sunday.
The searches took place at BYD offices in Schiedam, near Rotterdam, and Hoofddorp, near Amsterdam, according to the newspaper. JLR wanted to secure the records before they could be destroyed, and it suspects BYD reverse-engineered some of the technology that could be used in the Ti7.
The Times reported that JLR was looking for documents on the stripping down and reverse engineering of a Defender during the Ti7’s development. The report did not specify which components or technology were involved.
“JLR does not comment on ongoing legal proceedings,” a JLR spokesperson said. BYD told The Telegraph it would not comment on an ongoing legal matter. “We have no comment to make at this time,” it said in a statement to Motor1.
In China, the model is sold by BYD’s off-road Fangchengbao brand. It went on sale there in September 2025 in four versions priced from 179,800 yuan ($27,000) to 219,800 yuan ($33,000), and Fangchengbao said in July that cumulative sales had passed 200,000.
BYD is also preparing the Ti7 for Canada, where a leaked filing pointed to a second-generation Blade cell.
A Ruling This Week
Lawyers for the two companies faced each other in a courtroom in The Hague last month over how the seized records could be used, The Telegraph reported. The Dutch court is expected this week to rule on procedural elements of the case, including whether it can go ahead, the newspaper said.
Motor1 said a preliminary ruling was expected on Wednesday, November 11.
BYD’s lawyers called the seizure a “fishing expedition” and said too many files were taken, while JLR’s advisers accused BYD of obstructing the process, Motor1 reported. JLR wants evidence that BYD sought to copy the Defender’s design rather than merely produce a similar-looking car, according to The Telegraph, and ultimately wants the Ti7 kept off the European market.
The case will not be resolved before the Ti7 goes on sale in January, the newspaper said.
How Dutch Evidence Seizure Works
The Netherlands was chosen “owing to its strong intellectual property laws,” The Telegraph reported. BYD’s European arm was set up in Rotterdam in December 1998 as the group’s first overseas subsidiary and moved to nearby Schiedam in September 2015, according to BYD Europe.
Under Article 1019b of the Dutch Code of Civil Procedure, a preliminary relief judge can authorize provisional measures to protect evidence for an applicant that has made it sufficiently plausible that its intellectual property right has been or is about to be infringed. Those measures can include an evidentiary seizure of documents related to the alleged infringement.
The measures can be taken without hearing the other side, in particular where delay is likely to cause the applicant irreparable harm or where there is a demonstrable risk that evidence will be destroyed or lost, the law says.
A $64,300 Rival
BYD opened U.K. orders for the Ti7 in August at £47,995 ($64,300) for a single seven-seat Excellence all-wheel-drive version. First cars are due in showrooms this month, with customer deliveries starting in January, BYD said.
The Ti7 is a plug-in hybrid that pairs a 1.5-liter turbocharged petrol engine with electric motors for a combined 408 PS, according to BYD. It uses a 35.6 kWh Blade battery and has an electric-only range of up to 74 miles.
Land Rover’s U.K. website lists the Defender 110 from £64,315 ($86,200) and the larger Defender 130, which seats up to eight, from £84,250 ($112,900). A seven-seat Defender 110 starts at £68,465 ($91,800), about £20,500 ($27,400) more than the Ti7. The plug-in hybrid Defender is offered only with six seats.
The Ti7’s starting price is £36,255 ($48,600) below that of the cheapest Defender 130.
JLR’s Most Important Model
JLR retailed 29,500 Defenders in the July-to-September quarter, up 16.3% from 25,370 a year earlier, the company said in early October. That was 37.3% of its 79,000 retail sales, which fell 7.5% from 85,371.
Defender wholesale volumes rose to 29,500 from 21,300. JLR said the year-on-year wholesale gain reflected “the recovery from the cyber incident last year,” which halted its production from the start of September 2025. JLR, owned by India’s Tata Motors, will report second-quarter results on November 13.
Martin Limpert, who runs the Range Rover brand, told Car Dealer Magazine weeks before the report that JLR “does not appreciate seeing its designs copied by Chinese brands.”
JLR has been cutting jobs as it prepares a delayed push into electric models such as the Range Rover Sport Electric.
A History of Copy Disputes
JLR has fought lookalikes before, with mixed results. In March 2019, the Beijing Chaoyang District Court ruled that Jiangling’s Landwind X7 copied five unique features of the Range Rover Evoque and ordered its sale, manufacture and marketing to stop, JLR said at the time.
“We welcome this decision of the Beijing Court, which further strengthens our confidence in investing in China,” Keith Benjamin, JLR’s Global Head of Legal, said then.
A year later, the U.K. High Court dismissed JLR’s appeal against a 2019 Intellectual Property Office decision refusing to register the shape of the original Defender as a trademark. JLR had sought the registration in its dispute with Ineos over the Grenadier off-roader.
JLR also has its own Chinese partner. It formed a joint venture with Chery in 2012, a deal later extended to license the Freelander brand, The Guardian reported.
Other Chinese brands are bringing Defender-like SUVs to Britain. Chery’s iCaur brand has confirmed a U.K. arrival in 2027 with the Defender-like V27 as its first model, Car Dealer Magazine reported, and Chinese brands took more than 27% of U.K. registrations in September.
BYD registered 7,073 new cars in the Netherlands from January to October, up 120.8% from 3,203 a year earlier, according to RDC data analyzed by BOVAG and RAI Vereniging. That gave it a 2.4% share of a market that shrank 2.3% to 297,051 cars.
