A spokesman for JLR, owned by India's Tata Motors, said in brief
emailed comments to Reuters that a court in Beijing's eastern
Chaoyang district "served Jiangling with newly filed actions
surrounding copyright and unfair competition." He declined to
elaborate.
The suit relates to Jiangling's Landwind X7 sport utility vehicle
copying the design of the Evoque, JLR's first China-made model that
went on sale last year, said the person with knowledge of the legal
proceedings, who is not authorized to talk to the media and didn't
want to be named.
A spokesman for Landwind declined to comment.
Despite widespread and often blatant copying, global automakers
generally don't take legal action in China as they feel the odds of
winning against local firms are low. Also, a lawsuit can be bad for
branding if the Chinese public think a foreign company is bullying
domestic competitors.
If JLR wins its case, it could prompt other automakers to also take
legal action, said Chen Jihong, a Beijing-based lawyer at Zhong Lun
Law Firm, speeding up a shift to stronger enforcement of
intellectual property rights.
CLOSE RESEMBLANCE
Landwind unveiled a new version of its X7 SUV in November 2014,
drawing criticism for its striking likeness to the Evoque, an
imported version of which was already on sale in China.
The two SUVs have a similar shape, with the roof and windows
tapering from front to back, and near identical tail lights and
character lines on the side paneling. The X7's front grille is
slightly more rounded than the hard edges of the Evoque.
The slight differences between the two cars can be virtually
eliminated using widely available kits that allow a Range Rover
grille, logo and Land Rover badges to be put on an X7. Kits on
Alibaba's Taobao shopping website cost around 128 yuan ($19.43).
The X7 costs around a third of the price of an Evoque, and is some
way behind in technology and performance, said Yale Zhang, managing
director of Automotive Foresight.
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The JLR spokesman said Jiangling has been barred by injunction from selling the
X7 in Brazil, where it recently appointed an importer.
Separately, the source said with knowledge of the newly filed suit said the two
automakers are also discussing what Landwind can and can't do in any X7 design
update.
JLR sales fell by a fifth in China in January-March of last year - when it
launched its China-made Evoque - after rising 36 percent in the same 2014
period. In the same period this year, JLR's China sales rose 19 percent.
A lawsuit could be a long and grueling process.
It took Honda Motor, for example, 12 years to win a case in China against a
little-known local automaker - for copying its best-selling CR-V SUV - according
to a report by the official Xinhua news agency, confirmed by a Honda spokesman.
Even then, the Japanese firm was awarded only 16 million yuan ($2.43 million) in
compensation. It had sought 300 million yuan.
(This story corrects to make clear sale of X7 in Brazil prevented by injunction,
not agreement, paragraph 11)
(Reporting by Jake Spring, with additional reporting by Michael Martina and
Beijing newsroom; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)
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