Toyota Files European Patents for Yaris Sedan, HiLux, Fortuner and Innova MPV Designs

In a previous post we told that you that China’s Great Wall Motors successfully managed to file a European patent on the design of its Toyota Ractis lookalike, the Feel Free minivan (read about it here). Even though Toyota has no plans of importing its Yaris based MPV to Europe, we’re pretty sure that the Japanese firm’s execs won’t be at all happy with this development.

In our search to find out if Toyota has patented any designs at the European trademark office, we discovered that a few weeks prior to Great Walls Motors’ filing, the Japanese automaker had registered the designs of the Yaris Sedan, HiLux pickup truck, the Fortuner SUV and the Innova MPV. With the exception of the HiLux that is already available in Europe, we seriously doubt that Toyota has any intentions of selling the other models on the Old Continent. -Continued

Which leaves with us a question: did Toyota actually register the design patents because they new something was up and if yes, why didn’t they do the same with other models including the Ractis and especially the Scion range since Great Wall Motors has already created clones of the xA and xB models?

Toyota HiLux


Toyota Yaris Sedan


Toyota Innova MPV


Toyota Fortuner SUV