Back in 1641, patent laws originated to protect salt manufacturers in the Massachusetts Bay colony in the United States. Congress was given the power to enforce federal patent laws once the Constitution of the United States was effective in 1789. The Federal Patent Law was not actually introduced by the United States Congress until the following year, in 1790. Jewelry design patent laws began to be enforced.

Actually, fine gold jewelry designers now had the option to choose between two different types of patents. It started in 1850 to guard from copying from major competitors. Manufacturers could choose utility patents, which protected the way a product was being used or the way it worked, or they could choose to apply for design patents, which protect the concept behind the design of a product.

There is a separate numbering system for the utility patents and design patents and wherein the former has a higher count. There is also a difference in the length of time between the design and the utility patent as the former will only last upto 7 years with the average of 3 1/2 while utility patent could work for 17 years. In some cases, manufacturers opt not to acquire a patent on a certain product.

Fine gold jewelry is one of those product designs that fine gold jewelry makers did not feel needed patenting, since gold pieces are often made for specific events or for one single season and don’t require the expense of a seven-year patent. The amount for patents started at $60 up. This expense is not cost productive for some companies if the patent is going to run out in just seven years, depending on the item they are wanting to patent. They can dodge this expense without being noticed.

Utility design mechanisms can apply to over two decades which gives the individual a time frame of when the mechanism was introduced. But you cannot always determine when a piece jewelry was designed and made just by by its patent date. Because the design patent is shorter people are given a smaller time frame to know when the jewelry was made. But a manufacturer might continue making the fine gold jewelry without changing the design even after the fine gold jewelry design patent has expired, making it hard to determine the actual time the original patent was obtained on the jewelry design, and thus, hard to determine the age of a specific piece of fine gold jewelry.

Copyright laws were reformed in 1947 to give way for jewelry makers to give copyright to their designs. Since this was introduced, the need for patents decreases. Trifari Company sued the Charel Jewwelry company in 1955 over rights on fine gold jewelry. Trifari Company claimed that Charel Jewelry had stolen some of their designs for costume jewelry, specifically the “bolero” designs. As compared to patents copyrights is said to be more proficient and valuable since it could gain faster approval last longer and cost less. There is a small copyright symbol you can find beside the company’s name to show that they have a copyright on the fine gold jewelry.

Even when a fine gold jewelry design patent has been eliminated on a piece of fine gold jewelry, the copyright symbol now gives us interesting insights as to the age and identification of a specimine of fine gold jewelry.

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Category: Womens Interest
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