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25 March 2019

Jaguar Land Rover wins Chinese copycat case

British carmaker  Jaguar Land Rover has won a landmark case against a Chinese company selling a copycat version of the Range Rover Evoque model.

On Friday, March 22, Jaguar Land Rover  announced the unfair competition victory in China, which it said was the “first such case” to support a foreign company in the car industry.

The Beijing Chaoyang District Court decreed that Jiangling Motor Corporation (JMC) had directly copied five unique features of the Evoque model when building its Landwind X7, and this was leading to widespread consumer confusion.

The court ruled that all sales, manufacturing and marketing of the Landwind model must stop immediately and Jaguar Land Rover be paid compensation.

Back in 2014, WIPR  reported that Jaguar Land Rover was planning to take action against the Chinese rival, after the Landwind car was revealed to the public at the 12th China International Automobile Exhibition held in Guangzhou.

The following year, Jaguar Land Rover’s CEO Ralf Speth admitted that the company could probably not take any legal action against the Chinese company, according to the  Financial Times.

“In Europe, we can be protected against this kind of copy-paste in the design language, in the features but also the technology. You can’t be protected in China,” said Speth.

But the UK-based carmaker sued JMC in 2016.

Keith Benjamin, head of legal at the British carmaker, said: “We welcome this decision of the Beijing court, which further strengthens our confidence in investing in China and in the fairness of intellectual property adjudication in the Chinese courts.”

He added that the ruling is a clear sign of the law being “implemented appropriately to protect consumers and uphold their rights so that they are not confused or misled, whilst protecting business investment in design and innovation”.

WIPR approached JMC for comment but an email address for enquiries did not appear to be active.

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