With the continued popularity of smartwatches, and especially those running on the Android Wear platform, we've also seen a rise of custom watch faces to make the wearables more elegant or exciting. A lot of sites and apps have been offering watchfaces imitating some of the top luxury brands like Tag Heuer, Rolex, Patek Philippe. But now the brands are fighting back not just against the "pirates" but even the OEMs themselves.
Brands like IWC, Panerai, Omega, Fossil, Armani, Michael Kors, Tissot, Certina, Swatch, Flik Flak and Mondaine are all currently filing cease and desist notices to those who've been illegally offering their brands' likeness as digital watchfaces for free. Another major company cracking down on them is Richemont (Cartier, IWC, Panerai) have already issued notices to several watch face sites and giving them 24 hours to remove images that are in violation of trademark rights.
Omega has also been pretty busy going through forums where their brand's likeness is being offered for free for wearables, saying they should be taken down based on “registered trademark, copyright and design rights”. Historically speaking, there have been some watch companies that have successfully won a case against an OEM. Mondaine filed a case when their designs showed up in iOS6 and Apple had to reportedly shell out $21 million in licensing fees.
Leading user-generated watch face site FaceRepo said they have received several notices already but they keep emphasizing to uploaders that they do not encourage infringing content. They have also taken steps to ensure that those violations will not continue. They notify users that their content has been flagged and they have also introduced a keyword filter for those top brands. Now we wait and see who will win the "war" against fake watchfaces.
VIA: Torrent Freak