N
T N W
E W S S T E E L
The Curious Case of
Hamilton International
Ltd. v Vortic LLC
I
n the music industry, when one artist samples part of another
artist’s recording and makes something new with it, the
intellectual property questions are typically gray, sometimes
leading to legal battles. When Singer Vehicle Design modifies,
improves, and co-brands Porsche 911s, Singer is also flirting
with a legal attack from the storied German car maker. When the
small San Francisco store Park Life began selling small balloon-
animal dog models, artist Jeff Koons, who made himself famous
by making large scale sculptures of said balloon dogs, issued
a cease-and-desist letter, effectively claiming copyright over
balloons twisted up to look like wiener dogs.
Something similar is now happening in the watch world as
Hamilton, owned by Swatch Group, has sued Colorado’s Vortic
Watches in US Federal Court for both trademark infringement
and counterfeiting. Hamilton is suing Vortic because the latter
has been restoring scrapped Hamilton pocket watch move-
ments and dials and setting them into newly fashioned wrist
watch cases.
Vortic is claiming that their practice is “upcycling.” Some-
times called “creative reuse,” upcycling aims to take waste prod-
ucts and refashion them into useful things. Typically claiming a
positive environmental impact, examples of upcycling include
everything from refashioning old Coke-a-Cola bottles into lamps
to re-purposing food waste as bio-fuels. Set into the broader
context of the upcycling movement, Vortic’s use of Hamilton
(and other brand’s) movements and dials can seem like a noble
and fair pursuit, perhaps even one that honors and promotes
those brands.
Hamilton, on the other hand, sees Vortic’s use of Hamilton
movements and dials as an obvious infringement on their intel-
34 | AboutTime Magazine
lectual property. For Hamilton to prevail in these ongoing law
suits, they will need to establish that Vortic’s re-purposing of
the older Hamilton components constitutes trademark and/or
counterfeit breaches as described in the relevant US Federal
Laws on intellectual property—which, perhaps unsurprisingly,
differ from those set out in the Swiss legal system.
In the digital era, Vortic’s use of antique mechanical move-
ments and dials hardly resembles the kinds of IP questions
making news these days. However, Hamilton International Ltd. v
Vortic LLC might turn out to be quite relevant in the digital age
because as we digitize our lives at such a rapid pace, older
analog technologies are taking on newfound significance, desir-
ability, and market value. The recent upswing in the popularity of
both vintage and new mechanical watches is just one example,
with everything from old-school board games to pens, paper,
film cameras, and physical books seeing huge swells in popular-
ity over the past few years. Accordingly, many heritage brands
are seeing massive growth.
It is here that we might glimpse how Hamilton and Vortic are
tugging on the same rope, as both companies are relying on the
appeal of Hamilton as a heritage brand. Operated in Lancaster,
Pennsylvania from 1892 until consolidating all manufacturing to
their Swiss plant in 1969, Hamilton has been banking on their
American heritage and identity for decades. Today the Swiss-
owned and operated company issues mid-20th Century inspired
models like the Intra-Matic, the ubiquitous Khaki Field watch, the
Railroad, and—there’s no mistaking the American-ness of this
one—The Spirit of Liberty. As one considers the abundant Amer-
ican associations of the current Hamilton catalog, it is easy to
see that—despite being entirely a Swiss company for nearly half