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Jaguar Land Rover JLR has filed a lawsuit against Chinese automaker Jiangling Motor Co. for alleged design plagiarism, media reported Monday.
The JLR, owned by India's Tata Motors, has filed a lawsuit through a court in Beijing for intellectual property rights damages as well as unfair competition. The company confirmed this with the online news platformthepaper.cn this past Sunday without revealing any further details.
JLR claimed that Jiangling's Landwind X7 sport utility vehicle (SUV) is more or less based on a copy of the design of its Range Rover Evoque.
Online jokes about Landwind and Land Rover have gone viral since the debut of Jiangling’s Landwind X7 in November 2014 at an expo in Guangzhou, in southern China’s Guangdong province, since the November nova looked alike in many ways to Land Rover Evoque, which was launched in March 2014.
Despite similarities, there is a huge price gap between Landwind and Land Rover, as the latter model costs at least 400,000 yuan ($60,920), while a Landwind X7 is usually priced less than 200,000 yuan, according to Chinese car sales websites.
Landwind X7 has reportedly received over 10,000 orders two weeks after the debut and the company has pledged to reach a sales volume of 80,000 to 100,000 in 2016, according to thepaper.cn.
As early as 2006, JLR and Jiangling have been embroiled in disputes as JLR claimed the English trademark “LAND WIND” resembled “LAND ROVER.” The dispute was settled with Jiangling receiving its trademark registration as “LAND WIND” in the E.U., thepaper.cn reported.
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