Earlier this month, British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran was cleared of copyright infringement after he was accused of copying Marvin Gaye Let’s Get It On in the creation of his global smash hit Thinking Out Loud.
It was a keenly watched court battle because these types of copyright infringement cases are becoming more and more commonplace as today’s musicians take inspiration from the past and have their tastes influenced by the songs they have listened to throughout their lives.
Mr Sheeran’s lawyers successfully argued that it is almost impossible to produce entirely original music, and that any similarities between the chord progressions and rhythms of Let’s Get It On and Thinking Out Loud were down to inviolable “letters of the alphabet of music”.
The case got me thinking about the challenges of creating anything truly original in the watch world where the letters of the alphabet, or rules that everybody plays to are that a timepiece has to sit on the wrist and tell the time.
You can add any number of functions and design features, but the fundamentals remain the same. There is only so much you can do to make two chronographs, measuring an inch across, different from each other.
Which is why we see very few copyright infringement cases, despite so many watches looking similar to each other.
This struck me with the recent launch of Christopher Ward’s Twelve, a watch attacked and defended on social media for its similarities to Czapek’s Antartique but its far more accessible price.
Similar opinions had been voiced when Zenith launched its Chronomaster Sport, which was likened to the Rolex Daytona when it appeared in 2021.
In both instances, the similarities are obvious, but so too are the differences. The question that lawyers will argue over is whether the differences are sufficient.
My personal opinion is that originality is hard to come by in watches doing the same job, and wanting to benefit from hot trends like integrated bracelet steel sports chronographs, multi-sided bezels and textured dials.
I am glad the watch industry is less litigious than the music business, and hope that customer-driven Darwinism is the evolutionary force that ensures the survival of the fittest and most creative.
