The Swatch Group’s trademark lawsuit against Samsung in London has been resolved—for now, anyway.
The South Korean tech giant was ordered to pay the Swiss watch conglomerate $11.6 million by a High Court judge for permitting its smart watches to display digital copies of watch faces from luxury brands such as Omega, Breguet, and Tissot, Bloomberg reported.
“Use of the Swatch Group brands on Samsung’s supermarket shelves, downloadable for nothing or for little money, is to my mind very damaging,” Judge Marcus Smith said in the ruling. “The low price is demeaning of the brands the Swatch Group seek to promulgate.”
News of the Swatch Group’s came to light this past June, when the conglomerate originally sought $170 million in damages in the case. 26 third-party watch apps were involved in the proceedings; altogether, that bunch produced digital faces that were downloaded about 160,000 times in the U.K. and the E.U., according to a June 19th filing. Tissot chief executive Sylvain Dolla said that allowing luxury timepieces to appear on smart watches “kill[s] the value of the fine Swiss watch,” per a witness statement at the time. That sentiment of damage to the reputation of the luxury timepiece brands in its fold was at the core of Swatch’s suit.
