WatchGeek: The Brand

IT’S always fun to poke around the corners of the Internet, finding public information and bring it to light. Take Hollywood Florida based Invicta Watch Group. They tried to claim that the ‘brand’ Imperious wasn’t theirs; that they were only financing it. That’s until the Imperious trademark was revealed to be owned by Invicta from a public record source, at which point they tried to change the story and claim that they always claimed to have owned it. Shades of the much discussed Russian Diver.

Well I’ve turned up a few interesting trademark tidbits. Just two days after the original Watchgeek owner group announced the sale of the site to Invicta for undisclosed terms, IWG was busy trademarking “WatchGeeks” as both an “On-line forum for watch collectors” and as a line of “metal key chains; metal key rings”. It’s not a stretch to conclude that a line of t-shirts, sweat shirts and hats will surely follow.

What will this mean for the Ohio creator of the “Watch Geek Parking Only” signs on eBay? Can he expect a cease and desist?

ALSO of note was the application for the trademark “T.S.E.” back in October of 2010 for “Clocks and watches; Parts for watches; Watch bands and straps; Watch movements” and this begs the obvious question – is Invicta going to create a parts sourcing arm to rectify the ongoing customer complaints of poor service, lack of parts availability and turn around times that can stretch to several months for the smallest of repairs? Or will this new trademark bring more murkily sourced bands and accessories to the brand whose trademarked “Technica Swiss Ebauches” watch movements are actually assemble in Korea from Chinese Sea-Gull movements?