Breaking: Argon Watches Gets the Boot from Kickstarter?

Argon Watches search result on Instagram.

I just received a DM from IG @timesnewroman because he noticed that a project by Argon Watches is no longer available on Kickstarter's page. By way of background, Argon's Spaceone is a partnership between highly accomplished watchmaker Théo Auffret and watch businessman Guillaume Laidet. The watches are extremely creative, employing a jump mechanism, and have been very well received (you can see a compilation of their press coverage here).

Kickstarters "404 not available" screen as of right now.

There is a rather stark message on Kickstarter right now reading "Argon Watches is the subject of an intellectual property dispute and is currently unavailable." A screengrab is to the right. This has got to be a gut punch for the brand and for collectors who were looking forward to receiving these watches.

I reached out to Argon for an update and received the following statement:

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Hello there,

As of today, you might have received a message from the Kickstarter Trust & Safety Team concerning our recently closed SPACEONE project that you have backed.

We are surprised by this message from the Kickstarter team and have not received any advanced warning about this issue. This Intellectual Property Dispute concern our trademarks.

As a precaution, it seems that Kickstarter has frozen the project for the time being automatically while we provide the relevant documentation to their team.

The funds are currently still with Kickstarter - we have not received them yet and we will make sure that we stand right by you, the backer.

On our side - we want to confirm with you that we have indeed registered the trademark MONTRES ARGON in france in 2018 and extended to all EUROPE, USA & JAPAN.

We remain available for any other questions and will make sure to keep in close contact with you about the situation, the funds & the watches!

Best Regards, Guillaume, Theo and the Argon team
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Let's keep fingers crossed that this all gets ironed out sooner rather than later. A recent post suggests there are more than €1 million at stake!

My book on the history of Rolex marketing is now available on Amazon! It debuted as the #1 New Release in its category. You can find it here.

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