- GWM’s chairman apologizes for copycat advert
- Range Rover has been the subject of Chinese plagiarism recently
- Wei Jiangjun says company takes full responsibility
China’s Great Wall Motors recently took the wraps off its latest Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle, celebrating the release of the Wey V9X SUV with an ad campaign that immediately had internet sleuths comparing it to a previous Range Rover promotional image.
While it is often the physical product that draws criticism from purveyors of intellectual property rights – we’ve explained our feelings on Range Rover copycats – the issue in this case wasn’t the Wey V9X SUV itself, but the promotional campaign that looked practically identical to a shot Land Rover used last year to promote the Range Rover Sport.
As you can see from the image used here in the article (courtesy of Car News China), the marketing team at China’s Great Wall Motor (GWM) didn’t even try to hide the source of its inspiration, even opting for a near-identical color palette.
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As a result, GWM chairman Wei Jiangjun took to social media to take full responsibility for the incident, stating: “After verification, the poster was indeed plagiarized,” he said in Mandarin and translated to English by IT-Home.
“There can be no justification,” he added, before going on to claim that GWM would take “full legal and financial responsibility” for the slip-up.
Currently, there is no word on whether Land Rover will be taking any legal action against the company, which already has several models that it hopes will steal sales from the British off-road specialist, including the GWM Tank 4×4 model that is hugely popular in China and is tipped to head to the UK.
Analysis: History repeating
Land Rover has a long history with China, particularly with Jiangling Motors Corp, which was accused of copying the Range Rover Evoque with its own Landwind X7 model back in 2016.
Years later, the British manufacturer won a landmark court case that found that the X7 copied several unique features, leading to customer confusion. As a result, it was forced to cease production.
The ruling was supposed to send a message to the wider Chinese automotive industry that tougher intellectual property enforcement would be used in the future.
While direct copycats are now less of a common sight at China’s numerous annual motor shows, it is clear that many brands still push the limits of artistic license, with Jaecoo, Xpeng and Geely all recently launching electrified models that borrow heavily from the Land Rover stable.
It can be argued that because the Chinese automotive industry doesn’t have a long history to draw from, it will naturally look to more established western automakers for design inspiration.
But some industry insiders feel that things will soon change, with a number of Chinese designers already speaking out about the fact that their domestic automotive industry is plagued by a “trend of blindly following trends” according to Car News China.
In fact, things have got so bad that there have been cases of domestic manufacturers warring internally over issues of plagiarism, with emerging electric and New Energy Vehicles highlighted for their homogeneity.
But protecting intellectual property rights is extremely difficult in China, as the legal system often deems infringement of exterior design as inherently subjective, so many cases are dropped or settled out of court.
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