Suffolk Sportscars - liquidation

[anonymous-user]

You are not quite right about that.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2019/09/18/...

https://www.chinalawblog.com/2020/09/china-ip-lice...

[mph]

Even more specific.

https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/jaguar-land...

[cardigankid]

DonkeyApple said:

It’s likely that in the New Year JLR will have a new owner.

Cork Gully?

[a8hex]

Breadvan72 said:

lowdrag said:

It is my information that Jaguar only relatively recently got around to copyrighting the shape of nearly all of the cars from the 50s through the 70....

You have been mis-informed. Please read the thread. It is impossible to "copyright" something, especially something that was made many years ago. Copyright is created automatically when certain categories of work are created, and endures during the existence of its creator and for a certain period thereafter.

Most audio books I listen to have a bit at the end "So and So asserts their right to be identified as the author of..." isn't there something about people having to assert their moral rights?

[anonymous-user]

Copyright exists without assertion, but the right to be identified as the creator of a copyright work (one of the so called moral rights that are actually legal rights) has to be asserted in order to be enforced.

[lowdrag]

You put it so much more succinctly than I. The point I was trying to make was that Jaguar had never enforced that right until recently, and had no interest in stopping replicas being made until the last few years.. As I have said, they were more than helpful. Will they carry on and fight their case, or, given the financial situation, will they let it go by the wayside? They could be considered as guilty as the next man when one considers the "continuation" D, E and XKSS cars they have built over the last few years, and indeed the C-types they are proposing to build. At least there were spare chassis numbers for the first three, but the C-type chassis numbers finished at XKC 054 in 1953 and all were built.

[anonymous-user]

You appear still to be confused about different types of IP. The moral right of attribution has no relevance to the situation you are referring to. I again suggest that you read the helpful summary above.

[anonymous-user]

I add that the suggestion that it would in some way be wrong for Jaguar to produce continuation versions of old Jaguar types seems a bit whacky.

[lowdrag]

Then have a look here:-

http://www.dailysportscar.com/2019/09/13/bentley-t...

And if that's not enough have a look here:-

https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1125900_aston-...

They're all at it. Now have a look here at just how much it will cost you, after having spent a million+. to get the car road legal:-

https://www.topgear.com/car-news/retro/r-reforged-...

It's all about the bottom line. I can get a "proper" D-type built for £600,000 (I built the C-type for a quarter of that) yet Jaguar charged £1.2 million for the cars they made. As I've oft said, you paid £600,000 for the car and another £600,000 for the chassis plate.

ETA:- So, we shall have 12 new Bentley Le Mans cars (not forgetting how many Bentley Mk VI cars were sacrificed over the years to do the same) 19 new AM Zagatos (not forgetting how many DB4GT's had 4" chopped out of the chassis to do the same), we have had nine XKSS, 25 D-types and 7 lightweight E-types from Jaguar, and now they are set to build a bunch of new C-types too.

Edited by lowdrag on Sunday 27th September 09:20

[anonymous-user]

How is any of that relevant to the below, in which you appear to make the bizarre suggestion that Jaguar is in some way guilty of infringing its own IP rights?

lowdrag said:

... They could be considered as guilty as the next man when one considers the "continuation" D, E and XKSS cars they have built over the last few years, and indeed the C-types they are proposing to build. At least there were spare chassis numbers for the first three, but the C-type chassis numbers finished at XKC 054 in 1953 and all were built.

[DonkeyApple]

lowdrag said:

Then have a look here:-

http://www.dailysportscar.com/2019/09/13/bentley-t...

And if that's not enough have a look here:-

https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1125900_aston-...

They're all at it. Now have a look here at just how much it will cost you, after having spent a million+. to get the car road legal:-

https://www.topgear.com/car-news/retro/r-reforged-...

It's all about the bottom line. I can get a "proper" D-type built for £600,000 (I built the C-type for a quarter of that) yet Jaguar charged £1.2 million for the cars they made. As I've oft said, you paid £600,000 for the car and another £600,000 for the chassis plate.

I’m not sure they have anything to do with the discussion on this thread thought?

Those are just recreations built with the permission of the company that holds all the relevant legal rights, or by the company itself. They aren’t road legal.

The way to make a new car road legal is to either fake the discovery of some old records when doing a spot of clearing up or to take a chassis from an already existing road car, put your body on top and hope no one notices that it’s not looking a lot like a Ford Sierra any more. Or you go one step further and just rivet a new plate that says ‘Bugatti’ on it and pay a special club enough money for them to all agree that it’s a real car.

They’re all subtly different things. Clearly trying to pass something new off as something old has been something that the DVLA has made very clear it won’t be bribed to do any more. While on a separate matter the companies that hold the copyrights can also ask anyone making a copy of something they own to stop.

This particular company seemed to doing a few things. Firstly, it seemed to be making new cars and trying to pass them off as an old, different car and secondly it was making the new cars look exactly like a design they had no legal right to use.

I think that some of them can be road legal by using the kit car rules so are supplied missing parts like the engine to various markets that can take advantage of that loop hole.

I’m not understanding any link at all between what this company has been doing and the recreations above. Personally I think the eType recreations are a bit iffy as I don’t really believe the tall tale they’ve used but there is still an argument that they are more original than the ones the owners claim are the originals.

So, should the companies that currently build copy Jaguars be shut down? Well it depends on whether they are sanctioned by the owner of the copyright to carry on making replicas on one hand and on the other hand there is the DVLA aspect as to whether they can carry on using old IDs to fake the new cars into the road and avoid modern legislation.

[anonymous-user]

DonkeyApple said:

I’m not sure they have anything to do with the discussion on this thread thought?

...

They have nothing to do with the subject of this thread. Companies that own the IP in respect of the products that they or a predecessor company made can do what they wish with that IP.

As noted above, the liquidation of Suffolk might not have much to do with allegations of IP infringements. Someone above asked how a small company could run up a debt of 850K. Debt of that magnitude would not be regarded as particularly huge for many SMEs, and certainly not for a company operating in the high cost environment of sports car manufacture. The economics of being a small volume car maker are harsh. Ask TVR.

[XJ13]

Breadvan72 said:

lowdrag said:

It is my information that Jaguar only relatively recently got around to copyrighting the shape of nearly all of the cars from the 50s through the 70....

You have been mis-informed. Please read the thread. It is impossible to "copyright" something, especially something that was made many years ago. Copyright is created automatically when certain categories of work are created, and endures during the existence of its creator and for a certain period thereafter.

I seriously can't let these comments pass without response. This ill-informed author routinely spreads misinformation on forums such as this.

I don't profess to be any kind of expert in these matters but have lived with it for a number of years now and have access to some of the most knowledgeable experts in this field.

Breadvan - you are absolutely correct in your assertion that it is virtually impossible to "copyright" items such as these - certainly under current UK copyright law and its misalignment with European & International law.

lowdrag said:

It is my information that Jaguar only relatively recently got around to copyrighting the shape of nearly all of the cars from the 50s through the 70s

Complete nonsense. JLR do NOT hold any kind of design copyright on the shapes of cars such as C-Type, D-Type, XJ13 amongst others. These cars cannot be considered to be "works of artistic craftsmanship" because their design is not "original" and is almost entirely constrained by a functional requirement in any case, and so cannot be protected in this way. There is a case coming up in the Swedish courts regarding the C-Type in less than a month from now where JLR will attempt to establish such rights on the C-Type for the first time. It is an ill-advised move by JLR and their chances of succeeding are rather remote. As with other large entities, their tactic is to bully and threaten to bleed the defendant dry financially during a court process - knowing full well that if the case proceeds to final judgement they are likely to lose anyway. Even if JLR were to succeed, the value of design registration is of little value (see Ferrari vs Ares Design and the 250 GTO). Also, the ruling in a Swedish Court has little relevance to the UK (with Brexit throwing a further spanner into the works). Furthermore, JLR may be unable to prove that Sayer was any more than a Freelancer when the C-Type was designed.

The case won by Jim Ratcliffe's Ineos Group vs JLR DOES have relevance in this matter and illustrates the virtual impossibility of registering/protecting a 3D shape such as a car (in this case using the Trademark System).

lowdrag said:

The one car they have always tried to stop copying is the XJ13. But now there is the LM69 based on the XJ13 and while they did send out the "cease and desist" letter they are still being built with no apparent action from Jaguar.

More disinformation from this author.

JLR famously loaned their rebuilt XJ13 to a company well-known on these forums to enable them to produce their own replica of the car (starting with a XJ13 replica formerly in the collection of the late Walter Hill). JLR's list of acquiescence in the face of other replica manufacturers over the years (not just XJ13 but C, D, E-Types, XKSS etc) goes on and on .... this acquiescence continues to this day. Indeed, many senior managers within JLR drive their own replicas not built by JLR! Can you imagine a senior Ferrari manager being allowed to drive around in a replica GTO ?

The LM69 is NOT "based on the XJ13". It is entirely different both above and below the skin. The shape has been properly registered by the IP owners and takes inspiration from many cars of that golden era.

You can take it from the "horse's mouth" that the comments made by this author are misguided and false.

Edited by XJ13 on Saturday 24th October 10:38

[XJ13]

Breadvan72 said:

They have nothing to do with the subject of this thread. Companies that own the IP in respect of the products that they or a predecessor company made can do what they wish with that IP.

Perfectly true!

But only if they do own the IP.

Breadvan72 said:

The economics of being a small volume car maker are harsh. Ask TVR.

Tell me about it!

Makes us all the more targets for bullying by companies with plenty of financial clout ....

[DonkeyApple]

Sadly, that has always been and will always be the case.

My father got lucky in the 80s over a dispute with a tobacco company in F1 and only because in surprisingly a team principal dropped them in it unintentionally. I had a dispute with CitiBank’s external lawyers that dragged on for three years where my only tactic was based on the gamble that the head of the London office wouldn’t be aware and once their fees reached a silly level for a very silly argument where their claim was that no one could use the word ‘City’ in financial services other than themselves and he was made aware that he was the one being ripped off by his own contractors that it would be brought to an end. I got lucky there but it did mean I missed the IPO window for the business and arguably lost several million as a result. And just about the only way to ever win an employment dispute with a large employer is to be able to make it clear that it is going to be quicker, quieter and easier for them to pay you £1m to make it all go away right now than pay £2m in fees dragging it all along. Even then you have to have some pretty big cards to play for ‘might is right’ to not be deployed.

Incidentally, I knew about your amazing XJ13 project but I never new about the LM69. It looks lovely. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

[GoodOlBoy]

XJ13 said:

Tell me about it!

Makes us all the more targets for bullying by companies with plenty of financial clout ....

Can you throw any light on JLR's motives behind all of this ?

[lowdrag]

XJ13 said:

More disinformation from this author.

JLR famously loaned their rebuilt XJ13 to a company well-known on these forums to enable them to produce their own replica of the car (starting with a XJ13 replica formerly in the collection of the late Walter Hill). JLR's list of acquiescence in the face of other replica manufacturers over the years (not just XJ13 but C, D, E-Types, XKSS etc) goes on and on .... this acquiescence continues to this day. Indeed, many senior managers within JLR drive their own replicas not built by JLR! Can you imagine a senior Ferrari manager being allowed to drive around in a replica GTO ?

The LM69 is NOT "based on the XJ13". It is entirely different both above and below the skin. The shape has been properly registered by the IP owners and takes inspiration from many cars of that golden era.

You can take it from the "horse's mouth" that the comments made by this author are misguided and false.

Edited by XJ13 on Saturday 24th October 10:38

I still have the tapes from when I interviewed Walter Hill in 1992, and I looked at the Brian Wingfield replica made for him when I was at Sewells Point. It wasn't that good, and I cannot believe that it was authorised by Jaguar. They have always been so protective of the car. I discussed XJ13 with RS panels and Bob told me that even he was refused access to the car when he wanted to build a series of replicas. If I made a mistake on your LM69 cars, I apologise. I watched the Ebay auction of the engine you purchased, an engine which Jaguar tell me was never sold by them but supposedly given to a retiring member of staff by the German dealership who had put the engine on display and then in stores for years before giving it to the retiree. That seems to be water under the bridge, but after the purchase of the engine you came and stayed here, and told me that your plan was to build and race the replica. I asked you how you were going to get FIA papers, since the original had never raced, and you told me that that would be no problem. That was years ago, and I have no gripe with your intention to build and sell the LM69 cars and there I wish you well. I just wonder how they are going to get registered for road use in most parts of the world, the laws now being so tight. The USA too. Of course, there is the IVA in the UK, but in the rest of Europe all countries seem to have adopted the UNESCO definition of "collectable" which is 30 years.

Edited by lowdrag on Sunday 25th October 02:00

Edited by lowdrag on Sunday 25th October 02:38

[Paul Leek]

Leftfootwonder said:

It's a fair point. Could be to do with Jaguar offering their own 'Classic' department now. I wonder if this will also have implications for the likes of Eagle etc.

I am gutted, I always fancied a Suffolk C-Type one day...

I think Realm Engineering are still producing theirs...

[B60-B80-XK]

Hi All, just joined. I happened upon this thread when, having reenergised my intent to build a Suffolk C type replica googled their site to remind myself of their details, and found this.
I too am somewhat gutted, having kept aside various components like engines, gearboxes, diffs etc to aid the build. Now I’m not so sure.
Very interesting discussion of the potential reasons behind liquidation. Even if they are now continuing to operate under a new name, the potential for DVLA to make life very difficult is off-putting, although personally I don’t really care how the car is described on a V5 - it will always be a replica....getting stung for all that tax though for what will always be a low mileage car is, similarly off-putting.
I rather liked Suffolk’s design - especially the live rear axle , more true to the original, than Realm’s example, which has IRS.

[Graham-vajy9]

TR4man said:

Am I reading this correctly? There were two reasons for the liquidation - the JLR threat and then they also had debts of £850k?

How does such a small company have debts of that magnitude?

Simple, I understand that was the debt owed to to investor. You invest knowing you will win or lose, however for accounts the debt must be shown, but it’s never clear unless you follow the liquidation who are the creditors.