Cloning Brands. Tolerate or bann?

General
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I know, this theme isn´t new, but i am really curious why the facer officials don´t sort out all the clones of famous brands.

When you travel around the popular watches you get such a lot of entries with Tag Heuer, Breitling, Cartier, Rolex, Casio …

They don´t even hide it …

Don´t misunderstand me, I feel with these watchmakers, that want to have such a watch on their wrist. Moreover, when i started here, i created as well a few breitlings and other brands. But then i thought it all over and decided to sweep them all off. Now i create totally own watches and this gives me a far better feeling.

To say it with clear words: Cloning is illegal and a crime. So why do little labs allow criminal activities on their platform?

Or do they just close their eyes, because of the fact that these brands make the platform more attractive?

Do they tolerate it because of the competition to other platforms like watchmaker?

Is is all about the money for every click?

I think, they are responsible for the content they are spreading…

There are so many good watchface designers with great ideas that create their own pieces of art.

I really don´t know the reasons in the background but i really would like to hear an official comment.

Everyone of us must sign the policies when you publish a new watchface and they tell us that it is forbidden.

But no one will stop posting these popular brands until he gets in trouble with laywers. And this trouble could be very costly.

What do you think? Should the clones be tolerated or banned? When the officials don´t do nothing at all, aren´t they supporting crime?

This are just my two cents, i would like to know your opinions?

Greetings,

Phantasico aka GAUSS

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Hi phantasico
I made Omega and when I reached about 100 syncs, I was canceled, while others continue to churn out prestigious brands, it seems without problems. Good job everyone.

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IMO, ban the clones, as well as the name brand logos, but do not ban the members. Just make them create something original. I know, I know, it’s probably not easy to monitor, but that is just my opinion FWIW - since you asked.

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How does Facer decide which faces are Most Popular, and why are Rolex included there? I presume it’s by number of syncs. Including the name brand knockoffs there promotes the clones and encourages more of them.

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Good question. How do they choose? Or is it an mostly automated process, depending on syncs & time? Maybe they don‘t have the time or manpower to get rid of all the clones.

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I would imagine it is automated. The hard part with adding in some logic to ‘scrub’ for brands is that you could only potentially use the descriptions text as a search point. There’s definitely not going to be any specific tool to OCR images for specific logos and such. If you use text descriptions as a basis, then you may erroneously throw out anyone that even uses a keyword associated with a brand name. Its a very complicated process that would have to refined on an ongoing basis. It would be more work that it is worth. People would then start trying to subvert this by simply not adding in brand names to titles or descriptions.

There current method is based on receiving a take down notice from companies and then being reactive to that. @Facer_Official can correct me if I’m wrong. Personally I’ve had two of my designs removed from FOX sending in a request. My Bender and Fry designs that were Futurama branded got removed. Smartly enough I didn’t post them as paid designs, so no harm no foul. However, it stands as a reminder to consider others intellectual property and be aware that they will be subject to removal if requested by the owner.

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I’m sure people know this. As long as they can get away with it, they just don’t care. As for time and manpower, many sites hire trusted volunteers. Maybe they could find somebody to just remove all the clones from Newest and Most Popular.

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Hi guys,

To clarify a bit:

  • Every watch face takedown due to copyright/trademark infringement comes from the brand itself, not the Facer team. In other words, the Rolex team looks at Facer on a regular basis and requests some content to be taken down. Per our DMCA process, these faces are immediately taken down and their “designer” is notified and given the opportunity to appeal if they think they are not infringing.
  • Still per our DMCA process, repeat infringers are eventually banned from the Facer platform. This is a permanent action with no appeal.
  • Every single designer who receives a takedown is tracked in our system. Designers who are repeatedly flagged by brands and clearly don’t respect a brand’s copyright/trademarks lose their opportunity to be considered for the premium designer program.
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@Facer_Official

Thank you for this informations!

So it‘s at first in the hand of the brand_owners if watch faces get banned from the facer system.

BTW… why don‘t these brands search cooperations with designers on the facer platform to represent themselves here? When there are enough official watch faces maybe brand cloning will get lesser.

And they will have good promotion for their real watches…

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A number of them do! See https://news.facer.io/introducing-facer-4-0-and-the-watchmaker-series-28f4f5b8c896

And there are more coming :wink:

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Yes, i saw the watchmaker series but i didn‘t knew that these were cooperations with designers of the facer platform. I thought they came from their own designers.

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In fact, i don‘t know how you cooperate with the real watch manufacturers. Facer is a great promotion platform. There are a lot of potential future customers.

They can‘t ignore this growing market or do the big brands sleep?

A smartwatch face is a very nice thing but nothing compared to the real thing. I would offer them a full package with promotion and sample watches… most companies only react when they see direct results…

And … in my honest Opinion it would be a good idea to let the premium designers participate in this process… because they have experience and knowledge in watchfacing.

There is a lot of potential here, but it needs to be combined. At the moment, everyone makes his own stuff… and that means only competition.

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I quite like @Facer_Official 's way of handling it.I think cloning, especially with actual logos etc is not on. Many premium designers here do ‘interpretations’ of existing brands, which are tweaked versions with no logos. I personally think this is okay, as long as it’s not the only style of watch face they produce.

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I personally don’t care about cloning as long as they don’t get promoted to priemium because of it, which they won’t. Sure everyone wants a Rolex so they get a lot of syncs. Rolex has worked hard to get where they are today, to how popular they are. All this means, in my opinion, is if I want my brand to be as big as their’s it’s my turn to work that hard. Forgers and brands can battle it out all they want. I’m just going to focus on making the best faces I can as much as I can until everyone wants my brand on their wrist.

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It’s been said that “Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.” and I would argue that good design follows this rule as well. To blatantly copy a design is to hijack that perspiration, to benefit from it at the cost of the originator. To be inspired by something, on the other hand, is to benefit from that perspiration without directly harming the originator.

It is not always easy to spot the difference between theft and inspiration, but in order for good design to happen we must at least try.

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