Dutch Court Rejects Jaguar Land Rover's Evidence Preservation Request, BYD Achieves Interim Victory in Overseas Intellectual Property Defense

Jaguar Land Rover and BYD's intellectual property dispute has reached a critical procedural ruling. The District Court of The Hague in the Netherlands has officially rejected Jaguar Land Rover's request for evidence preservation, denying its demand for a surprise search of BYD's relevant office materials and internal R&D documents.

According to reports, Jaguar Land Rover faced a setback in its legal battle against BYD, as a Dutch court ordered the British automaker to destroy relevant information obtained during its lawsuit accusing the Chinese competitor of "copying."

The ruling was made during a hearing held on Wednesday. This is merely the first step in the entire judicial process, with further determinations to follow regarding whether BYD copied the design of Jaguar Land Rover's "Defender" off-road vehicle while developing its new Ti7 SUV, which is scheduled to be launched in the UK in January 2027.

Previously, Jaguar Land Rover filed a lawsuit in The Hague, accusing BYD of "infringing on the design rights of the Defender model"; it also filed a lawsuit in Rotterdam, alleging "copyright infringement" and "blind copying" of the Defender model. However, this initial hearing was initiated by BYD.

During the court proceedings in the Netherlands, BYD told presiding judge Hugo van Heemstra that Jaguar Land Rover's actions to seize documents from its Dutch office constituted a "fishing expedition" that exceeded the scope of the investigation into the "copying" allegations.

The judge supported BYD's claim on this point, ruling that the evidence obtained by Jaguar Land Rover during its raid on BYD's European headquarters in August was unrelated to the allegations in this case (i.e., the "copying" allegations).

The court has ordered Jaguar Land Rover to destroy the evidence obtained from BYD's office or return it to BYD within 24 hours. Failure to comply will result in a fine of €50,000 per hour.

The hearing revealed more details regarding the information obtained by Jaguar Land Rover during its raid on BYD's office in August.

This information includes: details of the Ti7 SUV's release plan, technical data, sensitive financial information related to the model, and any information regarding the Land Rover Defender stored in BYD's computer systems.

Court documents further detailed the search operation: enforcement personnel made electronic backups of data from BYD's European and Dutch offices' IT systems and photocopied physical documents left on-site.

Additionally, reports indicate that Jaguar Land Rover attempted to impose a €500,000 fine on BYD, claiming that BYD had not complied with the court's evidence seizure order.

BYD argued that the scope of the evidence seized by Jaguar Land Rover was overly broad and exceeded the scope of the "copying" allegations; therefore, BYD should not be held responsible for the fine claimed by Jaguar Land Rover.

Judge van Heemstra rejected Jaguar Land Rover's request for evidence seizure, stating that it could not prove that the BYD Ti7 SUV had caused it harm, as the model had not yet been launched in the EU at that time.

The court also ordered Jaguar Land Rover to pay BYD €25,376.57 in legal costs.

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