Shameless design theft ...

The copy of designs, logos and so on is an old issue within the watch industry. Generally known is the ongoing battle between watch manufacturers and counterfeitors with products of mostly Chinese origin.

What seems to be a rather recent trend, however, is the blatant design theft committed by so-called "serious" European brands, that often have their main focus in the fashion product world.

During a walk through our small town, I encountered these two examples:

Quartz copy of Bell & Ross watches

Copy of Glashütte Original's PanoGraph (shown on the right), offered by Emporio Armani. The latter is especially interesting, since it is offered by a fashion brand that is normally among the loudest, complaining bitterly about the evil counterfeiters copying the Armani stuff. It is noteworthy that this watch has a mechanical movement. Since I doubt Armani would finance the completely new design of a mechanical watch movement, I suspect this is a Chinese movement originally designed specifically to equip fakes of the famous GO PanoGraph. Instead of being taken out, thus the counterfeiters are allowed to enter "serious" business. So who says that crime doesn't pay?

A disturbing fact is that both these design copies were displayed in the shopwindows of "serious" watch dealers, in the close neighbourhood of their colleagues offering the expensive originals ...

Marcus

... it's one thing to see counterfeit criminals making dirty money in the margins of society. But when the Armanis of this world start legitimising the Underworld's products, things become infinitely worse! Shame, shame on you, Armani! From now on I will ...

Slow down...

By: nickd : June 25th, 2007-22:40

I don't think it's a fake movement (that is, a movement that tries to look like, or pretends to be, a Lange movement), it's just a movement that positions the hors/mins/date etc is certain places. Perhaps I'm wrong on this point, but I don't remember any ...

Sorry Nick, but you're wrong. Look at this fake GO ...

By: Marcus Hanke : June 26th, 2007-00:21

Already the very first Google hit brought up this watch: It needs no expert to realize that it uses the same movement as the Armani watch: And it is also clear that it was designed on purpose to imitate the well-known GO PanoGraph movement. I think the te...

Movement not watch

By: nickd : June 26th, 2007-00:53

Hi Marcus, I was just saying that I don't think the movement is a copy of the GO movement or that it pretends to be a GO movment. The movements I've seen in fake watches make no pretence at looking like the original, they just position the hands etc appro...

Sorry again; I still think you are wrong ...

By: Marcus Hanke : June 26th, 2007-06:47

I think we agree that there are different categories of fakes, each targetting different groups of customers. The people buying a $ 199 copy of a GO PanoGraph normally do not know anything about mechanical watch movements, let alone about GO movements. Th...

I agree, this is very disturbing IMHO

By: ei8htohms : June 26th, 2007-17:33

Hi Guys, I don't have anything much to add except to say that I don't think one can separate "the movement" from the "fancy under-dial gubbins to position the hands". I understand the point on some level (the movement is not pretending to be a GO movement...

Counter-point...

By: nickd : June 27th, 2007-00:46

Bill Yao makes excellent "copies" of the classic Benrus navigator-style watches. He's in the process of bringing out a "copy" of the classic Blancpain 50 Fathoms, he did another series heavily derived from the classic British military type 48 etc. Shouldn...

Horological Meandering