Rover Faces Tussle Over Intellectual Property Ownership

by Robin Pilgrim, LawAndTax-News.com, London

25 May 2005

Beleaguered automobile manufacturer MG Rover suffered a further setback this week when the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation revealed that it would contest plans to sell the firm as a going concern.

According to reports in the UK media, several overseas groups have expressed an interest in buying the firm as a whole, and maintaining at least some of its UK operations.

However, the SAIC believes that it has acquired exclusive rights to build the Rover 25 and 75.

"We are confident about what we have purchased and we feel strongly enough that we are prepared to fight for it with a protracted legal battle," an SAIC spokesman told the Times.

Accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, which is acting as administrator to Rover, believes that the intellectual property rights acquired by the Chinese group would not prevent full or partial operations from resuming in the UK, as Rover has retained the rights to the MG variants of the cars in question, which share 98% of their parts.

It has been suggested that the legal threat made by the SAIC represents a ploy to reduce the cost of parts and equipment, as the Corporation wants to purchase such assets but has no interest in maintaining operations in the UK.

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