High Court assesses negotiation damages after infringing watch face apps were hosted on Samsung’s store
Samsung trade mark damages have been assessed at US$11.6 million by the High Court following a dispute over watch face applications made available through Samsung’s Galaxy App store.
Mr Justice Marcus Smith handed down judgment on 26 August 2026 in Montres Breguet SA & Ors v Samsung Electronics Co Ltd & Anor, [2026] EWHC 2228 (Ch), following a four-day hearing in June. The case concerned the amount of negotiation damages payable after Samsung was previously found liable for trade mark infringements involving watch face apps.
The claimants were 10 companies in the Swatch Group, including Montres Breguet, Blancpain, Omega, Longines, Tissot, Mido and Swatch. The defendants were Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Samsung Electronics (UK) Limited.
The earlier liability judgment, handed down in 2022, found that Samsung had infringed the Swatch Group’s trade marks through watch face apps made available in the Samsung Galaxy App store between October 2015 and February 2019. That decision was affirmed by the Court of Appeal in December 2023.
The High Court identified three forms of infringement: signs appearing on the watch face itself, signs used in app names displayed in the store, and cases involving both. The judgment noted that the infringing apps were downloaded around 160,000 times in the UK and EU. The underlying figures recorded 157,373 downloads, including 617 paid downloads, which generated US$1,002.77 in revenue.
The central issue was how to calculate negotiation damages. The claimants’ expert assessed the damages at about US$170 million, while Samsung’s expert valued them at US$301.
Mr Justice Smith rejected both approaches. He said negotiation damages should be assessed by considering the terms of a hypothetical licence Samsung would have needed to make its infringing conduct lawful. The assessment had to be made on an ex ante basis, rather than simply using what actually happened afterwards to determine the value of the licence.
The judge also rejected an approach that focused only on downloads. Samsung’s hypothetical licence needed to cover both the use of trade marks on watch faces and their display through the Galaxy App store. The judgment found that Samsung had deliberately operated the store and enabled third-party developers to make applications available through it.
For solicitors dealing with intellectual property damages, the judgment provides a clear practical point: negotiation damages cannot simply be tied to the infringer’s actual revenue or the claimant’s measurable loss. The court must identify the rights required to make the conduct lawful and assess what a hypothetical licence would have been worth at the time, while using later events only to inform the parties’ expectations rather than to recreate the licence with hindsight.
Applying that approach, the judge initially calculated US$7.04 million for the dial branding infringements, using a US$220 smartwatch price, a 20% royalty rate and 160,000 downloads.
He then added US$10 million for the store display infringements and revised the per-download calculation for the watch-face use to US$10 per download, producing a further US$1.6 million.
The resulting negotiation damages were assessed at US$11.6 million. Mr Justice Smith said the figure involved a broad-brush assessment but could be justified by the evidence. He also said the rate was intended to provide an incentive for companies operating app stores to respect intellectual property rights without making their businesses uneconomic.
The judgment records that Samsung had removed the infringing applications after the Swatch Group notified it of the potential infringements. The court considered the removal relevant to the value Samsung placed on the infringing use, but rejected the argument that the limited downloads and revenue meant a licence would have little or no value.
The judgment concerned Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. A footnote states that Samsung Electronics (UK) Limited did not participate in the proceedings before the court and that nothing in the judgment should be taken as referring to that company.