CIBJO & IAC Collaborate To Address IP Rights In Jewellery Industry

The protection of individual creativity in the jewellery and watch industries, be it related to the design of jewellery, watches or gemstone cuts, or to the branding of collections and companies, will come under the spotlight during a CIBJO Jewellery Industry Voices seminar, which will take place as part of Initiatives in Art and Culture’s (IAC’s) 13th Annual Gold + Diamond Conference in New York, 17-19 July, 2023.

The session, which will be held on 18 July, will be the first seminar in a three-part series on the protection of intellectual property (IP) in the jewellery industry organised collaboratively with IAC, with the second seminar being held during the VicenzaOro Show in Vicenza, Italy, on 10th September, 2023, and the third seminar taking place as part of the 2023 CIBJO Congress in Jaipur, India, on 4th October, 2023, during the session of the CIBJO Ethics Commission.

All three seminars will be live-streamed, and a recording of each will be posted afterwards on the CIBJO website.

The seminar series is part of a joint initiative by the World Jewellery Confederation (CIBJO) and Initiatives in Art and Culture, an initiative which began in September last year. The goal of the venture is to create in-depth educational programmes for the jewellery sector, comprised of seminars taking place at multiple events in different countries.

The series dealing with IP is being organised together with the New York-based Jewelers Vigilance Committee, whose CEO, President and General Counsel is Tiffany Stevens, who also serves as President of CIBJO’s Ethics Commission.

On 30th August, 2023, CIBJO will release a special report on the protection of intellectual property in the jewellery industry, prepared by Stevens in her capacity as Ethics Commission President. It will be available for downloading at no cost from the CIBJO website.

The first seminar in the series, taking place at the IAC Conference in New York, will provide an overview of intellectual property from the perspective of the jewellery industry, and the various legal tools that are available to prevent its infringement.

Co-moderated by Lisa Koenigsberg, IAC President, and Steven Benson, CIBJO’s Communications Director, it will map out the topic with the help of Tiffany Stevens and Sara Yood, JVC’s Deputy General Counsel at the Jewelers Vigilance Committee (JVC), who is an attorney with extensive experience in intellectual property law.

They will be joined by two prominent American jewellery designers, Jess Busiashvili and Bliss Lau, as well as Darrell G. Mottley, a patent attorney. The session will be introduced by CIBJO President Gaetano Cavalieri.

“We are delighted to be collaborating with Initiatives in Art and Culture, creating an educational programme that traverses countries, manufacturing and trading centres, and markets,” said Dr. Cavalieri. “The value of such an approach when it comes to the protection of IP should be self-evident. Our chain of distribution is almost inevitably multinational, and the appropriation of Intellectual property could take place anywhere along it. The solutions we find need to be international, or else they will be of very limited use.”

“Jewellery’s value is derived not only from the precious materials of which an item is created, but also from ingenuity, vision, and skill of the individuals who created it,” said Dr. Koenigsberg. “It is their creativity that elevates the jewellery from a commodity to a work of art, and they have to be able to protect that in order to obtain fair benefit. It is a complicated but critically important subject that we are delighted to be examining together with CIBJO.”

The 13th edition of the IAC Gold + Diamond Conference is entitled Maintaining Purpose, and it will provide a wide-ranging look at the jewellery, precious metals, and diamond industries, with a twin focus on artistry and responsible practice.

During the conference, IAC will present its sixth annual award for Leadership in Responsible Practice to jewellery designer Pippa Small and its third annual award for Outstanding Contributions to the Diamond and Jewellery Industries to jewellery designer Satta Matturi.