Jaguar Land Rover has been ordered to destroy the information it seized from Chinese rival BYD in a court case over allegations of copying. 

The judge’s ruling at a hearing in The Hague was the first step in the process of deciding whether BYD copied elements of JLR’s Defender 4x4 design when making its new Ti7 SUV that’s set to on sale in the UK in January 2027. 

Jaguar Land Rover has initiated proceedings in courts in The Hague for “infringement of the model right to the Defender” and in Rotterdam for “infringement of copyright and slavish imitation of the Defender”. 

Today’s initial ruling was that the evidence seized by the British carmaker in the shock August raid on BYD’s European headquarters was not necessary to make that decision.

JLR has been ordered to destroy the evidence it took from BYD’s offices or return it to the carmaker within 24 hours, with fines of €50,000 per hour if it doesn’t comply. 

Hugo van Heemstra was the presiding judge at the hearing in the Netherlands, which was initiated by BYD in order to protest what it has called a ‘fishing expedition’ by Jaguar Land Rover. 

The details of the hearing gave more details of the information seized by Jaguar Land Rover in its raid of the BYD offices in August. 

The information included details about launch plans for the Ti7 SUV, technical data, sensitive financial information around the car and any information that BYD had on its computer systems relating to the Land Rover Defender. 

The raid for information was further detailed in the court documents, with bailiffs making electronic copies of the information from the IT systems at BYD’s European and Dutch offices, as well as physical copies of paper information held on the sites. 

It also emerged that JLR has tried to impose fines on BYD of €500,000 for not complying with the court-ordered seizure of evidence in the case. 

BYD argued that the broad scope of the evidence seized by JLR was beyond the remit of the copycat complaint, and that it shouldn’t be held liable for the penalty payments claimed by Jaguar Land Rover because of it. 

Mr van Heemstra ruled against JLR’s seizure of the evidence, saying that it couldn’t prove that it had been harmed by BYD’s Ti7 SUV because it wasn’t on sale in the EU yet. 

JLR was also ordered by the court to pay BYD €25,376.57 (£21,100) in legal costs.