Jaguar Land Rover has lost a trademark dispute case against Twisted Automotive, a Yorkshire-based firm specialising in modifying and upgrading Defender 4x4s.
The car maker claimed in the Court of Appeal for England and Wales that Twisted’s use of the name ‘LR Motors’ for its showroom in Thirsk, North Yorkshire is too similar to the firm’s common abbreviation, JLR.
Twisted counterclaimed that the 'LR Motors' name had been registered as a trademark back in 2015, while Jaguar Land Rover has never used the ‘LR’ tag as an official trading name.
The judge leading the case, Mrs Justice Rose, wrote after the hearing: “The undisputed evidence was that Jaguar Land Rover has never used the initials ‘LR’ as a sign for its goods in this country. Jaguar stated at the hearing that it was not putting forward an use of ‘LR’ prior to the application for registration in support of its application”.
Following the court's decision, Twisted founder Charles Fawcett claimed he had won a victory against "bullying tactics".
Twisted was established in 2001 as a business offering for the Defender, Land Rover Discovery and Range Rover. Soon after establishing as a full-time operation in 2008, the firm elected to focus solely on the Defender, capitalising further when the 4x4 went out of production in 2016 by buying up examples and restoring and upgrading them in-house.
Land Rover’s design boss Gerry McGovern has previously been outspoken about third party styling and tuning firms, vowing in 2017 to “put them out of business” via Land Rover’s Special Vehicle Operations.
“It’s easy to take a product that’s already been created and put a little spoiler on it or whatever, but I’d like to see them design their own car. We see them taking our property and make a bit more profit,” McGovern told Autocar in an interview.
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LR Arrogance
How DARE JLR tell their customers what they can of cannot do with something that is bought and paid for?!
Do they really think that this will attract customers, or increase brand loyalty?
Idiots!
Twisted Defender
Land Rover barely invested in Defender, they could have made it a world beater but they just left it as it was back in the 1980’s
Now they are whining, two years after stopping making Defender, because someone else has taken the initiative to improve the product.
Seriously, are you lot thick,
Seriously, are you lot thick, you have all slated McGovern, but he had NOTHING to do with the legal case, at all, ever, and his designs have turned a company making a few thousand cars per year into one that makes nealry 700,000 cars a year, so, again, more morons, some of the children that post here should learn the difference between a designer and a legal company, also the difference between the cars they drive (Nova's Corsa's etc) and dont confuse those heaps of tripe with decent cars like ones that are Designed, engineered and built in the UK.
Not thick at all
McGovern has come to personify all that has gone wrong with Land Rover. Pompous, arrogant, self-satisfied, overrated. The Defender had form follow function. The current range are amorphous blobs adorned with rubbish only a Premier League footballer would appreciate. Fake air vents? Spen King must be turning in his grave....
jonboy4969 wrote:
Now I know your profile is a parody.. If you call turning out a range of vehicles in various sizes, all competing against each other, but with slight variations in their inflated price tags, with some on an ancient Ford platform, with the company losing money and customers hand over fist, and no one apparently at the helm of the goodship JLR as it sails towrds an iceberg, doing well with decent cars, you clearly have been on the sauce.
Landrover should be the most profitable company on the planet, they only make SUV's and the world has gone SUV crazy, so why isnt it, could it be because they are average at best, but priced as premium, and the best versions are built in Austria at a non JLR factory not the UK.
Still never mind..
Oh and by the way, I drive a mk1 XF, that I am more than happy with, but I wouldnt touch a mk2, or any other current product from JLR.
jonboy4969 wrote:
McGovern has, according to the article, been quoted as saying he wants to put tuners and modifiers of Land Rover products out of business. Clearly you can’t comprehend the link between his views and JLR taking this aggressive legal action against Twisted. That is overwhelming why the comments on this thread have been so negative about McGovern.
Your insults and poor literacy do you no favours.