Why you shouldn’t call it a NATO strap, apart from all the legal issues

Jamie Weiss

You might be surprised by how many common watch hobby terms are actually generic trademarks. For those of you who don’t know what I mean by that, a generic trademark is a word, symbol or brand commonly used to describe an entire type of product or service – usually because of its popularity. Think Kleenex for facial tissues, Jet Ski for personal watercraft, or Aspirin for acetylsalicylic acid. Funnily enough, many of the most notable generic trademarks that pop up in watch discussions are around straps and bracelets. Some are obvious: we describe many three-link bracelets as being “Oyster” bracelets when that’s a proprietary Rolex design. Velcro is perhaps the most famous generic trademark of all (nobody calls them hook-and-loop fastener straps). One that might surprise you is the term “Tropic straps”: Tropic is actually a brand (which we stock in the Time+Tide Shop, by the way) and not just a particular style.

Many manufacturers describe their rubber straps as “tropic” or “tropic-style”, but Tropic is actually a brand name.

However, one generic trademark you might not know is a generic trademark is “NATO strap”. Despite the fact that the term has been in use for decades, in 2010, a company called International Watchman Inc. managed to trademark the word “NATO” (which seems like a massive screw-up on NATO’s part, frankly) and has been aggressively enforcing the trademark, forcing many small businesses to refrain from describing their products as NATO straps. Our editor-at-large Luke goes into more detail about the drama here. None of this has seemed to bother the big box brands, however: Blancpain, Breguet, Breitling, IWC, Omega, Seiko and TAG Heuer (just to name a few) have no qualms about describing some of their straps as NATO straps.

omega nato screenshot — A screenshot of Omega’s AU website where they have no qualms describing their straps as “NATO straps” (although you’ll note they do respect Velcro’s trademark).

But the purpose of this article is not to debate whether or not “NATO strap” is a generic trademark or not. It’s also worth pointing out that just because something has become a generic trademark, doesn’t mean that trademark owners can’t defend or protect their trademark – what International Watchman Inc. is doing is totally legal. My point is that legal issues aside, we really shouldn’t be calling them NATO straps anyway, as they were never designed or issued by NATO.

DefStan 66 15 — The British MoD’s Defence Standard 66-4 (or DefStan) from 1973, which contains specifications for what we now call a NATO strap.

According to NATO itself, what we call the NATO strap was first introduced by the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) in 1973, and was nicknamed the G-10. “Back then, there was only one version and it had a singular tone: admiralty grey… The material of the strap was nylon and had a width of 20mm. The buckles were chrome-plated brass and held an appeal within the military for their durability and practicality. With two spring bars and added length so troops could wear a watch on top of their uniforms, the design ensured that watches would stay secure on the wrist”, a NATO article explains. This design hasn’t changed much, you just have to look at the Bark & Jack straps on our store to see that.

MOD SIGN — The UK might be a member of NATO, but NATO didn’t design the NATO strap.

“Soon after the initial roll-out to the British Special Forces, the strap was modified to uniquely represent different British military regiments… The term “NATO” is due to the alphanumeric code used in the British MoD to identify all standardised material items of supply. The code was called the NATO Stock Number (NSN). So, while the NATO strap is not actually a NATO-branded strap, it is an important article of clothing that was used by forces of a NATO member country”, the article concludes.

seiko prospex spb239j1 — A Seiko Prospex SPB239J on its Seiko-branded NATO strap.

The article also shares this great piece of trivia: “While many might assume the most iconic featurette of the strap was seen in the first four James Bond films, the shots of the watch worn by Sean Connery in Goldfinger were actually filmed nine years before the launch of the original NATO strap back in 1973. Even so, the appeal of the striped nylon band holding Bond’s Rolex Submariner in place echoes a similar style and fashion to that of a true NATO strap, to the extent that it was called the ‘Bond NATO'”.

submariner goldfinger — James Bond’s Rolex Submariner on a pre-NATO strap in *Goldfinger* (1964).

As that tidbit alludes to, nylon watch straps existed well before the MoD came up with the G-10. Indeed, fabric straps that these days we’d describe as NATO straps were issued by the British Army and other armed forces since the last years of World War II, with ATP and Dirty Dozen watches being issued with canvas straps from 1945. While nylon was invented in 1935 and saw widespread use in WWII, nylon was mostly used to make parachutes and parachute cords rather than watch straps. This is all to say that NATO by no means invented the NATO strap.

With that in mind, we really should be calling them “British Army straps”… However, I’ll be the first to admit that “British Army strap” is a far less catchy moniker than “NATO strap”. Something I hope we can all agree on, however, is that you shouldn’t be putting NATO straps on dress watches.