LONDON, Aug 27 — Samsung has been ordered to pay Swatch Group US$11.6 million (RM46.7 million) after a London judge ruled that digital watch faces offered through its Galaxy app store infringed trademarks belonging to some of Switzerland’s best-known luxury watch brands.
The award follows a long-running dispute over third-party smartwatch apps that mimicked the designs and branding of Swatch-owned names including Omega, Breguet, Blancpain, Longines and Tissot, according to the Financial Times.
The ruling turns what might appear to be a dispute over downloadable graphics into a much broader argument about the value of luxury brands inside digital marketplaces — and the responsibility of the platforms that distribute them.
Swatch had sought US$170 million in damages. Samsung, by contrast, argued that the watchmaker had suffered virtually no loss and should receive just US$300.
The High Court landed somewhere in between, but much closer to Swatch’s position on the underlying principle.
Justice Smith awarded US$10 million alone for what he described as Samsung’s “store display infringements”, finding that simply displaying Swatch-owned brand names alongside cheap or free digital watch faces could damage the value of those brands, regardless of whether users downloaded them.
“The use of the Swatch Group brands on Samsung’s supermarket shelves (to use the physical analogy), downloadable for nothing or for little money, is to my mind very damaging to the Swatch Group’s property interests,” the judge said.
“The low price is demeaning of the brands the Swatch Group seek to promulgate.”
The apps themselves were developed by third parties rather than Samsung. But the South Korean technology group was found liable partly because it controlled the Galaxy app store’s review process while simultaneously promoting its smartwatches through the variety and attractiveness of their downloadable faces.
The High Court had already ruled in 2022 that Samsung infringed Swatch trademarks between October 2015 and February 2019. Samsung subsequently lost an appeal, leaving this year’s damages hearing to determine how much compensation was owed.
Swatch told the court that the disputed apps had been downloaded around 160,000 times across the UK and European Union.
It described them as “knock-offs” of its exclusive watch dials and accused Samsung of enabling a “large-scale appropriation” of trademarks that were both “valuable and carefully protected”.
The judgment underscores an increasingly important question for technology platforms: how far does responsibility extend when third-party developers upload content that trades on somebody else’s intellectual property?
Samsung argued that Swatch’s damages claim was “extravagant” and had “no relationship to the damage suffered”. It also said it “did not want” the infringing software on its store and removed it “as soon as the issue was raised”.
The company is considering challenging the latest ruling.
“We are carefully considering the High Court’s judgment and will consider all possible countermeasures, including an appeal,” Samsung said.
Swatch, meanwhile, accused Samsung of attempting to minimise the seriousness of the infringement.
The Swiss group said Samsung had “repeatedly attempted to downplay the scale and significance of the infringements by trivialising the compensation owed to the Swatch Group’s well-known brands”.
The fight may not be over.
Swatch has also launched proceedings against Samsung in the United States, although those have been put on hold pending the outcome of the English case.
