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Threads launches in Europe: what you need to know about Instagram’s short messaging service
by Jan Johannsen
Digitec Watch: well, that’s news to us
18.2.2019
Translation: Eva Francis
Our social media team keep getting tagged by posing Indonesians. Why? Because of a Digitec watch we know nothing about. It set us off on the search for a product that has the same name as us.
It’s Friday beers time again at digitec. My workmate Sandro Hostettler laughs and regales us with a tale from his social media team while swigging two beers. Sandro and his colleagues keep being tagged on Facebook and Instagram by pouting, posing Asians. They’re advertising a brand of watches called the Digitec Watch. So what’s it all about? Who are the people behind it and why have they picked the same name as that of a Swiss online shop?
One thing’s for sure: the watches aren’t ours. We don’t even have a Digitec watch. The other thing we noticed was most people tagging the watches were in Indonesia.
Will the fake watches crash out?
The Digitec Watch has its own semi-serious Facebook page.. According to the page description in Indonesian, the timepiece boasts the quality of a sports watch at an affordable price. But the people behind the page don’t seem to be as active as they once were. The last post is dated 30 May 2018. And the http://www.digitec-watch.com link they posted just leads to an Error 404 page (as of 15 February 2019).
Go to Instagram, however, and you’ll see much more aggressive promotion. Someone is posting almost every day using the digitec hashtag. Much to our social media team’s dismay. Don’t get me wrong, they’d love to see our customers – people like you – using this hashtag to share posts that are relevant. But Sandro tells me that since we changed our Instagram handle from digitec_de to digitec, we keep getting tagged by Indonesians with a fetish for watches.
The watches are reminiscent of Casino’s G-Shock and Baby-G models. You’d be hard-pressed to miss the similarities. And that’s when I wondered: are the watches just fake? Has someone over there opened a watch factory and just woken up one day and decided to engrave Digitec Watch on them?
But it’s not only Casio watches that are being sold under the Digitec name. The Indonesian Digitec impersonators don’t seem to shy away from making a smartwatch that has taken liberal creative licence from the Apple Watch.
I wonder what Apple makes of it?
Trademark law
You could say that in the circumstances, what this Indonesian company is doing leaves it in a pretty iffy zone legally speaking because of the similarities with the Casio watches. But not because of the name. They’re allowed to steal our name because the brand name digitec is only trademarked in Switzerland.
To get international trademark protection you need to register a brand name with WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization. A quick glance at the register shows that Digitec has been registered by this Indonesian company along with a logo. That means they can use the brand name on all products in the Nice classification 14. In case you were wondering, the Nice classification controls the use of names, and classification 14 is predominantly for jewellery, including watches.
There’s also a Digitec Watch Face that’s been developed in Austria and is now available to download here from the Google Play store.
But going back to the Digitec Watch, how much will it set you back? It’s available in this shop for 155,000 rupees, which is about 11 Swiss francs. Or you can grab it here from Jam Tangan Digitec. The only thing is, these online shops don’t deliver abroad. But that’s not stopping me. I’m going to try ordering it another way. Wish me luck!
Testing devices and gadgets is my thing. Some experiments lead to interesting insights, others to demolished phones. I’m hooked on series and can’t imagine life without Netflix. In summer, you’ll find me soaking up the sun by the lake or at a music festival.
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