- GWM president apologizes for copied ad
- The Range Rover was recently the subject of Chinese plagiarism
- Wei Jiangjun says company takes full responsibility
Chinese company Great Wall Motors recently revealed its latest plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, celebrating the release of the Wey V9X SUV with an ad campaign that immediately prompted internet sleuths to compare it to a previous Range Rover promotional image.
While it’s often the physical product that draws criticism from IPR providers – we’ve explained our feelings about Range Rover copycats – the problem in this case wasn’t the Wey V9X SUV itself, but the promotional campaign that looked virtually identical to a photo 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), Great Wall Motor’s (GWM) China marketing team didn’t even try to hide the source of its inspiration, even opting for an almost 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 into English by IT-Home.
“There can be no justification,” he added, before asserting that GWM would take “full legal and financial responsibility” for the error.
It is currently unclear whether Land Rover will take legal action against the company, which already has several models it hopes will steal sales from the British off-road specialist, including the GWM Tank 4×4 model, which is hugely popular in China and is expected to head to the UK.
Analysis: history repeats itself
Land Rover has a long history with China, notably with Jiangling Motors Corp, which was accused of copying the Range Rover Evoque with its own Landwind X7 model in 2016.
Years later, the British automaker won a landmark court case that found the X7 copied several unique features, causing confusion among customers. As a result, it was forced to stop production.
The decision was meant to send a message to the entire Chinese auto industry that stricter intellectual property enforcement would be applied in the future.
Although direct copycats are now less common at China’s many annual auto shows, it’s clear that many brands are still pushing the boundaries 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 auto industry does not have a long history to draw on, it will naturally look to more established Western automakers for design inspiration.
But some in the industry believe things will soon change, with a number of Chinese designers already speaking out that their domestic auto industry is plagued by a “tendency to blindly follow trends”, according to Car News China.
In fact, things have gotten so bad that there have been cases of domestic automakers warring internally over issues of plagiarism, with emerging electric vehicles and new energy vehicles being highlighted for their homogeneity.
But protecting intellectual property rights is extremely difficult in China, because the legal system often views exterior design infringement as inherently subjective, so many cases are dropped or settled out of court.
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