The High Court recently issued its judgment in Montres Breguet SA & Ors v Samsung Electronics Co Ltd & Anor [2026] EWHC 2228 (Ch). It concerned the assessment of damages following an earlier finding that Samsung had infringed several Swatch Group trade marks through watch-face apps available in the Samsung Galaxy App Store. The liability issues had already been decided in 2022 and upheld by the Court of Appeal in 2023.
The claim related to digital watch faces (watch face apps) that could be downloaded to Samsung’s smartwatches from the Samsung Galaxy App store. In the liability judgment, Falk J held that Samsung itself had used the marks in the course of trade and was liable for infringement.
The Court’s approach to negotiating damages
The key legal issue was how to assess negotiating damages (“user damages” or “licence-fee damages”). The judge reviewed the case law and emphasised that negotiating damages:
- are compensatory, not punitive;
- are not based on the defendant’s profits;
- are not based purely on the claimant’s loss;
- seek to compensate for the wrongful use of another person’s property rights by assessing what a reasonable licence would have cost.
Consequently, the court had to identify the licence Samsung would hypothetically have needed before the infringements occurred.
Rejection of Samsung’s valuation
The judge firmly rejected Samsung’s US$301 assessment which focused almost entirely on the tiny amount of direct revenue generated by paid app downloads. The court considered this fundamentally flawed because it ignored the value of the trade marks themselves, Samsung’s benefit from operating a legally compliant smartwatch ecosystem, the store-display infringements, and it incorrectly focused on actual outcomes after the event rather than expected value at the time of a hypothetical negotiation. The judge considered that Samsung derived value from being able to market and operate a smartwatch platform featuring large numbers of watch-face apps and from the user experience that ecosystem created.
Rejection of Swatch’s valuation
The judge also rejected Swatch’s US$170 million claim, which was based on the value of a hypothetical full-scale co-branding arrangement between Samsung and Swatch, comparable to high-profile collaborations such as the Apple-Hermès watch partnership. The court considered that this significantly overstated the nature and extent of the rights Samsung actually required. Samsung was neither seeking co-branded hardware, branded watch straps or packaging, nor any wider integration of the Swatch brand. It simply needed permission to host and distribute watch-face apps incorporating Swatch’s trade marks. Any hypothetical licence therefore had to reflect this much more limited use. The judge was particularly critical of the assumptions underpinning the US$170 million valuation, describing many of them as belonging to “the realm of fantasy”.
The court’s decision
Marcus Smith J adopted a “third way”, accepting that Swatch’s brands were highly valuable, Samsung had infringed valuable intellectual property, and a token award measured in hundreds of dollars would be absurd. Equally, a nine-figure award would vastly overstate the scope of the infringement. The judge distinguished between dial branding and store display infringements. He concluded that a reasonable licence fee for the dial branding infringements would be approximately US$10 per infringing download. With around 160,000 downloads, this produced the sum of US$1.6 million. The judge considered store display infringements to be potentially more serious because the Swatch brands were displayed in Samsung’s store alongside apps that could be downloaded for little or no cost, thereby risking dilution or devaluation of the brands. For these infringements he awarded a lump sum of US$10 million, giving a total of US$11.6 million.
