Proprietary Cuts: Their Own Brand of Trouble

Faceting machine discussions here

Moderators: PinkDiamond, John

Post Reply
User avatar
PinkDiamond
Posts: 15402
Joined: Thu Jun 04, 2015 9:30 pm
Location: Ozark Mountains

Proprietary Cuts: Their Own Brand of Trouble

Post by PinkDiamond »

Apparently it's not only costly to protect a proprietary cut you might design, but it's tough to catch the copycats, and costs more money to take them to court. This article from Rapaport discusses the ups and downs of protecting your work, and at the bottom there's an add-on called ‘Get rid of the lawyers’ that has an interesting take on how to address the problem, that you can access via the link. Hope some of you find this useful. :)

Proprietary Cuts: Their Own Brand of Trouble

Creating specialist shapes is more complicated than you might think.
Aug 22, 2018 10:46 AM By Joshua Freedman

Image

"RAPAPORT... Creating and launching a proprietary cut is difficult for almost any diamantaire. The costs can be prohibitively high, even for larger companies. In addition, the weak prices of non-round goods mean there’s no guarantee the venture will boost profits.

Take the example of Pieter Bombeke (pictured), one of Antwerp’s best-known cutters and a specialist in making innovative, non-generic shapes. Bombeke has created many shapes of his own, but until recently had only patented one: Solomon’s Seal, which uses an optical effect to make the Star of David appear on the stone. He has since begun registering another two creations: the Xiao Long — Chinese for “little dragon” — and the Dreamcatcher, which has a spiral-like appearance.

It’s a difficult business. Many bespoke cuts don’t lend themselves to large-scale production, and are therefore hard to make money from, Bombeke explains.

“Both of the models I’m protecting now are easy to take into production,” he notes. “Lots of the new creations in diamonds, you need to be a master to be able to cut them. The [Xiao Long and the Dreamcatcher] can be done in the same way you cut a brilliant — mass production without too much of a problem, just with a small change in the equipment.”

Patent absurdity

Cutters such as Bombeke have many proprietary shapes under their belts, yet can’t afford to protect and defend every design, explains Alexander Dayekh of Antwerp-based Dayekh Gems. It’s a vicious cycle in a market where dishonest competitors have been known to buy a tiny diamond with a particular cut, put it through a stone-scanning machine, and reverse-engineer larger, more expensive versions of that same branded cut. Even if the original craftsman has patented the stone, impostors can simply change one facet and win any ensuing court case.

“It means you’re paying for protection but can’t enforce it,” Dayekh sums up.

The imperative to protect intellectual property means relatively high legal fees in the initial stage. Those amounts rise sharply if another company contests the patent, or if the need arises to sue someone who has stolen the design, especially if the culprit is in another country. That’s on top of the cost of buying rough and marketing the product. Simulation technology lets artisans experiment with cuts, but they still have to do some of the work with real stones.

“If you take a painter, his raw materials are a canvas or a piece of paper, and he can turn that into a masterpiece,” says Dayekh, who has launched the Antwerp Diamond Guild to help people in this sector (see box). “But for us, our canvas is very expensive — it’s a rough diamond. So just to experiment, we have to invest a lot of money.”

Princess of sales

More established companies can at least handle the high startup costs. New York-based Hasenfeld-Stein spent close to $70,000 obtaining a patent for its FirePrincess cut (then called FireMark), estimates company president Hertz Hasenfeld — and the process took three years due to several challenges to the application. The launch of the cut in 2008 was an attempt to create a more attractive version of the princess, which Hasenfeld says was mainly a lower-end stone because cutters manufactured it to maximize yield rather than for its beauty. The firm, a De Beers sightholder, later introduced another cut, the FireCushion, at a much lower cost, as it received a patent uncontested in just three months.

The FirePrincess and the FireCushion initially ... "

https://www.diamonds.net/News/NewsItem. ... of+Trouble
PinkDiamond
ISG Registered Gemologist


· ´¨¨)) -:¦:-¸.·´ .·´¨¨))
((¸¸.·´ ..·´ There are miracles left for you to do .... -:¦:- -:¦:-
-:¦:- ((¸¸.·´* It all begins inside of you. ;)
Post Reply