Is AP Releasing a Swatch Collab Because They Lost a Trademark Battle?

The official announcement of a long-rumored collaboration between luxury watchmaker Audemars Piguet and Swatch has inspired lots of talk among timepiece obsessives. Out of that talk, a new theory has developed, one tying the collab to a series of trademark cases in the United States and Japan.

The theory, which you can now see all over social media, goes like this: In recent years, AP lost trademark cases over the design of its Royal Oak line in both Japan and the United States. Those losses mean that a ton of knockoffs — watches that mimic the Royal Oak design, but that will be much cheaper than the five or even six-figure prices the real ones garner — are on the way.

So to deal with this flood of cheap imitations, the theory continues, AP is teaming with Swatch to make its own affordable Royal Oak-style watch. That way, they cut off the market for the fakes.

Social media posts from the companies seem to indicate that the collaboration will be called “Royal Pop.” Fans of the brands have speculated that this means the product will be some sort of mix of AP’s Royal Oak and Swatch’s Pop Swatch line. The latter is named that because of its detachable dial — you can pop the watch off of its band.

So yes, it seems possible — even likely — that the AP/Swatch collab will have some sort of relationship to the Royal Oak. What we know for certain is that the front half of the theory — the part about AP losing Royal Oak-related trademark cases in both the U.S. and Japan — really is true.

More than a year later, in July of 2021, the JPO said no. Essentially, they ruled that the Royal Oak’s design wasn’t distinct — that consumers would look at that shape and just think, “wristwatch,” and not “Royal Oak.” In addition, they found that the design hadn’t become “nationally recognized in Japan” as belonging specifically to AP.

AP appealed the decision that October. In June of 2023, the JPO upheld their original decision. This time, they fired back hard, including photos of 29 different watches that, like the Royal Oak, have octagonal bezels (some of which, also like the Royal Oak, were attached by screws), and/or grid patterns on the dial.

AP wasn’t willing to take no for an answer, though. They took the case to the Japanese IP High Court, and in March, 2024, they lost there, too. One Japanese law firm summarized the decision as: “[G]eneral consumers, as the target audience, do not distinguish the product in question based on its shape but rather identify it through the letters displayed on the dial or the descriptions provided in advertisements.”

The U.S. story played out similarly. Back in July, 2020, AP tried to trademark two basically identical watch designs (this one and this one). Both of them had features that should be familiar to Royal Oak lovers: octagonal bezel, eight screws, Grande Tapisserie decorative pattern, etc.

After a lot of back-and-forth, the US Patent and Trademark office submitted a final refusal to both in January of 2024. Their logic was that the features AP wanted to trademark were “nondistinctive” and “highly common in the watch industry.”

Three months later, AP appealed, and the case went to the TTAB, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. In January, 2025, the decision came down: AP lost again.

So yes, in theory other watchmakers could create a timepiece that has some of the same design elements as a Royal Oak, and have a chance of being legally in the clear. However, tying that fact to AP’s Swatch collab is speculative at best.

Complex has reached out to both Swatch and AP directly to ask about the validity of the theory. A rep for AP said that Swatch is handling all communications related to the collaboration. Swatch themselves have not yet responded.