View single post by Matt V
 Posted: Sat Jul 7th, 2007 11:27 am
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Matt V

 

Joined: Wed May 30th, 2007
Location: Twin Cities, Minnesota USA
Posts: 104
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 Just to put this event and the other players in the German town of Glasütte in perspective: the Swatch Group already owns Glashütte Original and Union Glashütte. A. Lange & Söhne, the most prestigious watchmaker in Glashütte, is owned by the Richemont Group.

Nomos, founded in 1990 and using the name of a company that made pocket watches 1906-1910, had originally been sued a few times for using the protected name "Glashütte" on the dial. Only those companies are entitled to use the town's name who create more than 50 percent of their movements' value in and around Glashütte. Nomos originally used Peseux (ETA) movements.

Now that they heavily invested into making their own movements, they were looking at protecting that investment and going after the competition, in this case Mühle Glashütte.

Mühle uses primarily ETA movements and had already been sued by Nomos in 2002. They made a deal and pursued their business by adding more work to those movements (decoration), but this didn't suffice in the eyes of Nomos, so they sued them again. Mühle lost that lawsuit, was faced with paying the awarded amount of M€ 63 / ~M$85 and now went under Chapter 11 protection because they were unable to make that payment.

This really puts an interesting spin on the situation of these new German companies that want to differentiate themselves from ETA and The Swatch Group.

Cheers

Matt

P.S. see the press release at http://www.muehle-glashuette.de/index.php?cat=5&news_id=57