A Dutch court has lifted an evidence seizure that Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) carried out at two BYD offices in August and ordered the British carmaker to have the seized files destroyed, dealing JLR a setback in its fight over the BYD Ti7 SUV it says copies the Land Rover Defender.
Preliminary relief judge H.F.R. van Heemstra of the District Court of The Hague found the seizure unnecessary, according to the ruling dated November 11 and a corrected version issued on Thursday, in summary proceedings that BYD’s Dutch and European units brought against JLR.
JLR must instruct the bailiff or court-appointed custodian to destroy the data within 24 hours of the ruling being served, or pay €50,000 ($55,400) for each hour it fails to comply, up to €500,000 ($554,500). The order is to destroy the data.
The judge also rejected JLR’s claim that BYD owed it €500,000 in penalties for failing to cooperate with the August seizure, and ordered JLR to pay €25,376.57 ($28,100) toward BYD’s legal costs.
The ruling does not decide whether the Ti7 infringes any JLR right. That question sits in two separate cases JLR has filed in The Hague and Rotterdam.
After the ruling, BYD told China’s Guancha that in overseas intellectual-property enforcement, “the scope of evidence-gathering needs to match the product’s market and the evidence required, and cannot be arbitrarily expanded.”
“BYD adheres to in-house research and development, and while complying with the intellectual property laws of every country, it will also protect the brand’s legitimate rights and interests,” the company said, according to Guancha.
Why the Seizure Fell
The court gave two reasons. JLR had not argued in its application that it needed the seized material to show that the Ti7 infringes its EU design rights on the Defender, so the seizure was unnecessary for that purpose, the judge wrote.
JLR had said it needed the records to measure the scale of the infringement and its losses. But the parties agreed that BYD has not sold or offered the Ti7 in the European Union, which means “the alleged threatened infringement cannot yet have caused Jaguar any damage,” according to the ruling.
The prospect that JLR might win an order in the future requiring BYD to disclose sales data did not change that. The judge said Dutch evidence rules require an existing legal relationship between the parties, and “the possibility that a legal relationship could exist in the future” is not enough.
BYD had also argued that the seizure was too broad, calling it a “fishing expedition” that captured competitively sensitive business information unrelated to the Ti7. Because the seizure was lifted on the first grounds, the judge did not rule on that argument.
What JLR Seized
The same court authorized the seizure on August 14 without hearing BYD, under the Dutch procedure that allows evidence to be secured in intellectual-property cases. Bailiffs carried it out on August 24 at BYD Europe in Schiedam and BYD Nederland in Hoofddorp, the ruling says.
The order covered data from August 1, 2025, found with search terms including “Ti7,” “Tai 7,” “Leopard 7,” “Defender,” “Land Rover” and “L663,” the internal code for the current Defender.
It reached Ti7 launch plans, pricing and marketing strategies, sales and financial data, supplier and production documents, and design files such as CAD drawings, renderings and benchmark studies comparing the Ti7 with the Defender. The data was held by a court-appointed custodian.
The Sunday Times made the searches at the two offices public last Sunday.
A Failed Penalty Claim
The fight over cooperation took up much of the ruling. JLR demanded on September 4 that BYD pay €500,000 in penalties, saying it had delayed access to IT systems, including Microsoft’s Purview data tool, and had not given adequate access to messages on WeCom, Tencent’s business messaging app.
The judge found provisionally that BYD had met its obligations. A BYD IT employee in the Netherlands could not grant access to Purview without help from staff in China, and a Chinese IT employee granted it at 5:15 p.m. on the day of the search, the ruling says.
BYD handed over WeCom log-in details as required, the judge said, and the fact that the encrypted messages could not be exported was not BYD’s fault.
The judge added that penalties can only be imposed when BYD has been told concretely what cooperation was expected and within what deadline, and the bailiff’s reports contained no such warnings. JLR is barred from taking further enforcement steps under the August order, with a €500,000 penalty for each breach.
The original ruling of November 11 wrongly named BYD as the party liable for costs. BYD asked the court that day to fix what it called obvious clerical errors, JLR did not object, and the judge issued a corrected ruling on Thursday ordering JLR to pay.
BYD had claimed €60,917 ($67,600) in legal fees. The court capped the lawyers’ fees at €18,000 ($20,000) under the Dutch guideline rates for a normal intellectual-property summary case and added court and bailiff costs. The ruling is immediately enforceable, even if appealed.
The Copying Cases
JLR has filed a summary case at the District Court of The Hague over its EU design right in the Defender and a separate case at the District Court of Rotterdam over copyright infringement and slavish imitation, the ruling says. In those cases it is seeking a ban on infringement and access to the data covered by the seizure.
JLR does not comment on ongoing legal proceedings, a spokesperson said before the ruling. BYD had told Motor1 at the time that it had no comment.
JLR suspects BYD dismantled a Defender to reverse-engineer some of its technology for the Ti7, The Sunday reported. The ruling does not address that allegation.
Martin Limpert, who heads the Range Rover brand, told Car Dealer Magazine on October 27: “Seeing copies of our cars, of our designs, is something we absolutely do not appreciate, of course.”
BYD has not sold the Ti7 in the EU. The court noted that the head of BYD Europe announced in an Instagram video on October 8 that the Ti7 had arrived in the U.K., which left the EU in 2020.
BYD opened U.K. orders at £47,995 ($63,700) for a single seven-seat version, against £68,465 ($90,800) for a seven-seat Defender 110, with customer deliveries due in January.
The Ti7 has 408 PS and up to 74 miles of electric-only range, according to BYD. Land Rover’s U.K. website lists the Defender 110 from £64,315 ($85,300) and the plug-in hybrid Defender 110 P300e, which seats six, from £71,840 ($95,300). Sold in China by BYD’s Fangchengbao off-road brand since September 2025, the plug-in hybrid is priced there from 179,800 yuan ($27,000) to 219,800 yuan ($33,000).
JLR ultimately wants the Ti7 kept off the European market, The Telegraph has reported.
The Defender is JLR’s biggest seller. JLR retailed 29,500 Defenders in the July-to-September quarter, up 16.3% from 25,370 a year earlier and 37.3% of its 79,000 retail sales, the company said in October.
