Bailiffs acting on a court order searched BYD’s offices in the Netherlands for documents showing whether a Land Rover Defender 110 was torn down and reverse-engineered to help create the boxy Ti7 SUV, according to a report in The Times. Jaguar Land Rover accuses BYD of stripping down a Defender to build the Ti7. JLR declined to comment, and The Auto Wire found no statement from BYD as of Nov. 12.
What has been reported so far
The Times reports that a Dutch court is due to decide whether BYD has a case to answer. The Auto Wire searched published Dutch court decisions and found no ruling or order in the matter, so what JLR told the court, and which rights it relies on, has not been made public. At this stage, the copying is JLR’s allegation.
A search order preserves evidence and decides nothing
EU rules on enforcing intellectual property let courts order quick measures to preserve evidence of suspected infringement, including a detailed description of the goods in question and physical seizure, and in urgent cases a court can act without hearing the other side first. That is Article 7 of Directive 2004/48/EC. The applicant has to put forward evidence supporting its claim, so a granted search tells us JLR persuaded a judge there was enough to justify the step. The pending ruling is the one that decides whether the case goes on.
Why a teardown alone proves little
Every manufacturer buys rivals’ cars and takes them apart: to weigh components, measure panel gaps, cost out a wiring harness, and see how a competitor solved a packaging problem. That is ordinary benchmarking and not unlawful by itself. A claim like JLR’s therefore turns on what came after the teardown, meaning whether the finished Ti7 reproduces something JLR holds rights in, or whether confidential material changed hands. Teardown records matter because they would show dates, who ordered the work and what engineers were told to take from it, which is where benchmarking and copying separate.
Which rights JLR is using is the open question. The UK Intellectual Property Office says in its own blog post that the “Defender” name was registered as a UK trade mark in 1983. A name is not a body shape, and nothing The Auto Wire found says whether JLR relies on trade marks, registered designs or something else. Boxy utility vehicles also long predate the current Defender, so a shape claim has to point to specific features and not a silhouette.
The Ti7 is already on sale
BYD’s UK site markets the Ti-7 as “the all-new boxy design family SUV”, lists it as the Ti 7 DM-p in its hybrid range, and advertises a 49-month PCP at 3.9% representative APR on orders placed from 7 October to 31 December 2026. BYD’s Argentine site has also announced a presale of the Ti7. Nothing in the reporting says JLR is asking for sales to stop. A document search is a step toward a case and not an injunction.
What to watch
Watch the Dutch court first, since it decides whether BYD has a case to answer. After that, whether JLR names the rights it relies on, and whether BYD ever says a word in public. The Auto Wire has also covered JLR’s plan to cut 4,000 jobs and the tariff problem around a Defender pickup.
If a rival buys your car, takes it apart and then sells a boxy SUV of its own, where should the line fall between benchmarking and copying?