This is really closer to a trademark issue than patent, no? Few people are buying a watch for the process by which the watch works, but rather for the quality

This is really closer to a trademark issue than patent, no? Few people are buying a watch for the process by which the watch works, but rather for the quality and status (and price) that the brand represents. To check this hypothesis, think about how mad anybody would be if the internals of a watch were copied exactly on a fake, but the branding, name, logo were totally unique.