Blancpain Fifty Fathoms MIL-SPEC (2017)
Herman Melville once said, “It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation,” which is fine when you’re already on every literature syllabus in the English-speaking world. When it comes to the multi-billion-pound watchmaking industry, things get a little less carefree.
Oh, there’s plenty of originality out there of course; some of the higher-end independents like MB&F, Urwerk and their ilk thrive in gleeful antithesis to creative stagnation. However, the more you come down the pricing ladder the more similar things become.
Take as an example the diving watch. I did a piece on the best of them not so long ago and the thing that came across more than any other is just how similar the vast body of them are. They all take elements from Blancpain’s Fifty Fathoms and the Rolex Submariner – itself incidentally a Rolex-branded version of an earlier Tudor watch.
I am of course generalising here; not all diving watches are homogenous. Even in those that are, there are reasons of course – the elements that are necessary in a diving watch – but it’s at the point where you can take the name off and never be able to guess whose dial it is. So incestuous is it that you could be excused for crying plagiarism at every other new release.
Spot the difference: Rolex Cosmograph Daytona (1965) vs Tag Heuer Jack Heuer Anniversary Autavia (2017)
The big question is why have no watchmakers sued? You’d have thought that every time someone brought out a Daytona lookalike (TAG Heuer’s Autavia for example) Rolex would get up in arms about it. They don’t. In fact, there have surprisingly been very few actual plagiarism court cases in watchmaking.
Probably the highest profile was aimed squarely at the big time, the Apple Watch. When the wearable came out, its clock function looked remarkably like that used by the Swiss Federal Railway service, now the purview of Mondaine. Identical in fact. The judge thought so too; Apple shelled out a cool $21 million to retroactively licence the design.
Spot the difference: Apple iOS Clock vs Mondaine Wall Clock
Most salient, however, was a 2014 case from Audemars Piguet, when US watch distributor Swiss Legend decided to completely rip off the Royal Oak. It was a pretty awful idea. If you’re going to imitate a design, maybe don’t do one of the most iconic ever created, even by Gerald Genta’s standards. Swiss Legend’s copy isn’t even subtle in its imitation and AP won the case for $9.8 million in damages.
For the most part though, the case of AP vs Swiss Legend is an outlier. The Royal Oak is one of the more unique designs out there, from the bezel shape to the iconic screws. These are design elements more than they are functional ones, which is why AP actually have a case.
Most watches and parts of watches are protected by patents, not copyrights. It means that the way they work is what’s guarded, not how they look. This in turn means that only when the imitation is unjustifiably blatant can there even begin to be a case, and most of the time watchmakers are savvy enough to simply skirt around the issue.
Spot the difference: Audemars Piguet Royal Oak vs Swiss Legend Trimix Diver Chronograph
There’s also another reason that revolves more around self-preservation: nobody wants to fire the first shot. This institution of imitation has gone back decades, centuries in some cases, and if one brand wanted to sue another for copyright infringement, they’d likely get hit in turn. But to be honest, it’s not something that we as watch lovers should actually mind about.
The fact is that all this mimicry isn’t necessarily the death of originality. If we were talking about films here, the term ‘homage’ would have already burst forth like an overdone jumpscare. There it’s perfectly acceptable provided it’s not a shot-for-shot rehash (and even then, it seems fine if it’s critically-acclaimed).
Back to the diving watch, both the Submariner and the Fifty Fathoms hit the nail on the head in functionality. Who could blame imitators coming after? Nobody loathes Star Wars for ripping off Seven Samurai or The Force Awakens for ripping off… well, Star Wars. In film, fashion and plenty of other industries, that’s simply fair play.
Does it lead to a kind of creative malaise? Yes and no. On the one hand using the elements that have proven successful is a safe bet. Every brand wants to make money after all. On the other hand, being able to reinterpret them in an entirely new way is what sets a watch apart. In short, if you can make a design everyone knows feel like your own, you’ve done a very good job indeed.
