alterego Posted March 8, 2013 Report Share Posted March 8, 2013 Recently I read an article about the lawsuit started by Cartier against Raymond Weill because of alledged infringement of copyrights. Apparently, RW "copied" some distinctive features of Cartier's Ballonbleu watch and reproduced them in a watch - the Jasmine - that looks similar but which is not a rep or straight "copy" of the original Cartier. Who draws the line defining if a watch is a copy or not ? I wonder how many watch manufacturers should Rolex sue if it came to fight for copyright infringement of the venerable "Datejust." concept. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
45acp Posted March 8, 2013 Report Share Posted March 8, 2013 Intellectual property law is an exceedingly complicated subject. Where the line is draw is by necessity going to the determined by some amount of subjectivity. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
automatico Posted March 9, 2013 Report Share Posted March 9, 2013 'Tanks' for instance...cartier threatens to sue anyone who uses the term 'tank' in print ads on eBay etc when the 'tank' style watch was made by dozens of watch companies before cartier ever did. Since cartier makes most of their $$ by selling $200 quartz watches for $10k to a band of fools, they have to fight everyone who has a similar design in an attempt to keep their carticrap 'exclusive'. (I am trying to be nice) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
panerai153 Posted March 9, 2013 Report Share Posted March 9, 2013 Some of these like Cartier are mostly bluster and bullying. Probably don't ahve a legal leg to stand on. Some things that are clear patent infringements are a different story. Panerai has been pretty sucessful defending it's crown/crownguard/locking mechanism. Hardly ever see any watches with anythiing even similar on the genuine market. On the other hand you have things like Mercedes hands that Rolex uses, copied by hundreds of brands.I doubt that those hands were patentable or copyrighted, as they are not something unique that Rolex invented. Also over time patents expire and become public domain. that's why we have generic drugs, brand patents expire and others step in to make the same drug at 10% of the price. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghost Posted March 9, 2013 Report Share Posted March 9, 2013 The jasmine is actuallyquite fetching Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ronin Posted March 9, 2013 Report Share Posted March 9, 2013 Some of these like Cartier are mostly bluster and bullying. Probably don't ahve a legal leg to stand on. Some things that are clear patent infringements are a different story. Panerai has been pretty sucessful defending it's crown/crownguard/locking mechanism. Hardly ever see any watches with anythiing even similar on the genuine market. On the other hand you have things like Mercedes hands that Rolex uses, copied by hundreds of brands.I doubt that those hands were patentable or copyrighted, as they are not something unique that Rolex invented. Also over time patents expire and become public domain. that's why we have generic drugs, brand patents expire and others step in to make the same drug at 10% of the price. Beat me to it. Yes, a patent expires. However, things like Tank could be a Registered Trademark, which also creates another set of issues. However, unlike the @#$%^& @ Monster (Cable) who tried to sue anyone with Monster in their name back in the day. If you are in non-competing industries it is less of an issues. IIRC Monster tried to sue a Auto Transmission Repair company and Monster.com (the Job/carrer) company claiming they had exclusive rights to Monster. But I digress. There is also something called Prior Art. You could not generically patent a "round" or "square" watch generically for example because it is too vauge and assumed that it has to be that shape to begin with. In short, as long as a consumer is not "confused" or "mislead" into thinking they are getting the competing $$$$$$$ brands product, then they should be OK. Cartier vs RW on the dial is a lot different then say Cartier -vs- Kartier | Carier | Carrie, etc. Then there is clear potential for confusion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alterego Posted March 12, 2013 Author Report Share Posted March 12, 2013 Your coments are food for thought as some say. I never thought about the actual cost of producing a Cartier that sells for 10K versus the poor man's equivalent watch that sells for $200. In fact, I bought a Davosa "Yachtmaster" with an ETA movement for $ 250 from a seller in the internet and I haven't heard about Rolex suing the German manufacturer for "cpying" their design. Maybe one should post pics of our gen parodies (NOT REPS) of famous watches and see how many there are out there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest allforfun Posted March 13, 2013 Report Share Posted March 13, 2013 Go to Argos and look at rotarys! Copy's of bretlings there's loads of copy cats in the watch game Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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