Swiss watchmaker Swatch sues Samsung for copying its watch-face designs

South Korean tech giant Samsung has been dragged in to court by popular Swiss company Swatch group for infringing a trademark of the company’s design in one of Samsung’s wearable devices. The watchmaker alleged that the South-Korean company copied its design for downloaded smartwatch faces and filed a complaint in a district court in the US.

In the complaint, Swatch stated that Samsung’s watch faces “bear identical or virtually identical marks” to the trademark that Swatch owns and uses for the watches of its brands like Tissot, Swatch, Omega, Longines.

According to a report in Reuters, the complaint specifically names the smartwatches that have infringed Swatch’s watch designs.  Swatch has alleged that Samsung’s Gear S3 and Frontier smartwatches have copied its downloadable designs and asked for more than $100 million in damages.

“This unabashed copying of the Trademarks can have only one purpose – to trade off the fame, reputation, and goodwill of the Swatch Group Companies’ products and marks built painstakingly over decades,” said Swatch Group in its complaint. The company stated that it did not provide any license to Samsung for using its trademarks for the smartwatches. “This is a blatant, wilful and international violation of our trademarks by Samsung,” a Swatch spokesperson stated to Reuters. “The affected brands are worth billions. Our claim for compensation? Triple digits in millions,” he added. 

Incidentally, this is not the first time Samsung has been accused of trademark infringement. The company had been in legal trouble in the past after companies like Apple and Sony complained about Samsung copying their designs or infringing the patents. One of the most famous cases against Samsung was when Apple won over $1 billion in damages in 2011. The case was closed with both companies settling privately.