Jaguar Land Rover has been ordered to destroy or return documents seized from two BYD offices in the Netherlands, or face fines of up to €500,000 (£418,000), in the first ruling in its dispute with the Chinese carmaker over alleged copying of the Defender.

A judge in The Hague ruled yesterday that the seizure of evidence in August was unnecessary for substantiating JLR’s copying claims. JLR, which is owned by India’s Tata, accuses BYD of producing a lookalike version of its best-selling model in the Ti7 SUV.

Judge Hugo van Heemstra found that the material was not relevant to the copycat claims or to any potential financial damages for JLR, because the Ti7 is not yet on sale in Europe.

He ordered JLR to destroy the material or return it to BYD within 24 hours of the ruling. Failure to comply would incur a penalty of €50,000 (£41,800) per hour, capped at €500,000. JLR was also ordered to pay €25,376.57 (£21,200) towards BYD’s legal costs.

It emerged earlier this week that JLR had orchestrated raids on BYD’s offices in Schiedam and Hoofddorp to seize digital documents about the launch of the Ti7 in Europe and the UK.

This week’s hearing was requested by BYD, which described the raids as a “fishing expedition” that went beyond the scope of the copying allegations.

The hearing revealed that documents seized from BYD’s Dutch headquarters included sourcing information about launch plans for the Ti7 in European markets. BYD said the digital records also included technical and commercially sensitive data.

JLR has chosen the Netherlands for its legal action because of the country’s robust intellectual property laws and history of rulings favourable to IP holders. It has launched proceedings in The Hague over the alleged “infringement of the model right to the Defender”, and in Rotterdam over the alleged “infringement of copyright and slavish imitation of the Defender”.

JLR argues that BYD intentionally copied the latest generation Defender’s design, rather than simply producing a similarly styled vehicle, and infringes its intellectual property rights.

A JLR spokesman said the company “does not comment on ongoing legal proceedings”. BYD representatives also declined to comment.

This week’s ruling is the first step in deciding whether BYD copied the Defender’s shape, and the court case is likely to run for the rest of the year. JLR is expected to seek an injunction preventing the Ti7 from being sold in European showrooms, though there are doubts the case will be resolved before the car reaches UK dealerships.

The Ti7 arrives in UK showrooms in early 2027, priced from £47,995. That is about £21,000 less than the cheapest Defender 110 and about £35,000 less than the extended-wheelbase Defender 130, which has seven seats as standard.

The Defender is JLR’s best-selling vehicle, with more than 115,000 units delivered globally last year, around three in every 10 of its sales.

The seven-seat Ti7 is a plug-in hybrid, for which BYD claims a range of up to 102 miles in electric-only mode. At 5,146mm long, its dimensions place it between the Defender 110 and 130.

BYD’s website says its “unapologetically boxy profile delivers the imposing, chunky design that finds favour among SUV buyers, yet delivers a contemporary look”.

The dispute comes as Chinese brands expand in Britain. More than one in five (21.6 per cent) of the 152,730 new cars registered in October were Chinese models. UK motorists have ordered almost 338,000 vehicles from Chinese brands since January, 18 per cent of registrations so far in 2026, and BYD alone has sold almost 75,000 cars in Britain this year.

It is not the first time JLR has gone to court over alleged cloning. In 2020 it failed in an attempt to trademark the shape of the original Defender and block Sir Jim Ratcliffe from launching the Ineos Grenadier, his 4×4 inspired by the original Defender.

A year earlier it won a case in China against Jiangling Motor Corporation, after a Beijing court ruled that its Landwind X7 had copied five unique design features of the Range Rover Evoque.

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