British Court Orders Samsung to Pay Swatch $11.6 Million for Trademark Infringement

Swatch Group has won a long-running London trademark case against Samsung, but the award fell far short of the Swiss watchmaker’s demand. The South Korean technology company must pay $11.6 million, or 9.4 million Swiss francs, for digital watch faces that imitated ten Swatch brands.

Swatch had sought $170 million in damages, while Samsung Electronics had been willing to pay just $301. The High Court of Justice of England and Wales set the final amount in a judgment made public on Aug. 26.

Samsung’s Galaxy App Store offered the watch-face applications from October 2015 to February 2019. The imitated brands included Breguet, Blancpain, Jaquet Droz, Glashütte Original, Omega, Longines, Tissot, Hamilton, Mido and Swatch. The applications were downloaded about 160,000 times in Britain and the European Union. Some were free, while others required payment, but the judgment said they generated only about $1,000 in revenue.

Swatch’s press service said Samsung had repeatedly tried to minimize both the scale and seriousness of the infringement by reducing the damages owed to the group’s well-known brands to almost nothing.

The British court had already ruled against Samsung in 2022 for violating Swatch’s trademarks. In late 2023, the Court of Appeal also sided with Swatch, finding that the fact that third parties developed the applications did not change the verdict. The same ten brands have filed a separate case against Samsung in New York, where proceedings continue.

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Samsung repeatedly tried to minimize the scale and seriousness of the infringement by reducing the damages owed to Swatch Group’s iconic brands to almost nothing.