Luxury watchmakers have been on the hunt to crack down on street vendors and online stores selling fake replicas for some time now, and with the emergence of the smartwatches market there has been an increase in knock off digital watch faces, giving the industry a new problem to deal with. The biggest watchmakers like IWC, Panerai, Armani, Michael Kors and Tissot have all taken notice and have started to send out cease-and-desist notices to websites offering lookalike smartwatch faces in an effort to curb the issue. With Samsung, Sony, Pebble, Motorola and LG all unveiling wearable devices, the urgency of this matter is likely to be compounded with Apple set to release its version early next year. Downloading a digital copy of a luxury timepiece is a much cheaper option than getting the actual thing, but watchmakers are prepared to aggressively fight the any illegal reproduction of registered trademark and copyright designs. The operator of the leading watch face site FaceRepo has confirmed the efforts from brand owners to take down the designs and maintains that the, “owners of copyright or trademarks have the right to defend their brand.” The uploading of infringing content to the website is discouraged, but it will likely continue for the foreseeable future with an increasing number of people getting into the latest tech trend.
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