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 Congress introduced the federal patent law in 1790. There were laws made for jewelry design patent.
Jewelers were granted two types of patents. By 1850, competition within the jewelry industry had become steep enough that manufacturers and designers of fine gold jewelry started investigating how they could get patents on their designs. 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. As for the duration of a patent, a utility patent can conceivably continue in effect for seventeen years, while a design patent can only protect a design for seven years. The life of design patents averages 3.5 years. Some companies have not utilized the patent system.
One of the reasons why fine gold jewelry makers didn’t use patent system is that there are some designs which are only good for a single season or event. The amount for patents started at $60 up. Some companies didn’t waste their time and funds to get patents since it only lasted for a few years and it could easily be dodged.
Utility patents on mechanisms might last more than twenty years and is valuable in protecting the manufacturer for time frame. But you cannot always determine when a piece jewelry was designed and made just by by its patent date. There is a smaller time frame within which a piece of jewelry can be estimated to have been made, since its design patent is shorter than a utility patent. Even though the patent expires, the company may still use the design so you may have some inaccuracy there.
In 1947, jewelry makers began copyrighting their designs instead of patenting them, when copyright laws were enacted. This meant that fine gold jewelry patents were not needed nearly as often as they had been previously. In 1955 the Trifari Company brought a suit against the Charel Jewelry company. Trifari Company claimed that Charel Jewelry had stolen some of their designs for costume jewelry, specifically the “bolero” designs. Copyrights are easier to obtain than patents and they cost less; therefore, they are more practical for fine jewelry designers and also they are more valuable. Fine gold jewelry, if it’s copyrighted, will always display the copyright symbol beside the name of the manufacturing company.
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.