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De Beers cracking down on Everlon infringement

By Michelle Graff
November 05, 2009
A trademark protects pieces in De Beers' Everlon Diamond Knot Collection, like this pendant.

New York--De Beers is cracking down on companies creating designs that closely resemble its Everlon diamond jewelry.

In an interview with National Jeweler on Wednesday, Sally Morrison, interim U.S. director in charge of the De Beers account at JWT, confirmed that De Beers' new diamond designs--based on the Hercules knot and marketed as the "strength of love, forged in a knot"--as well as the name "Everlon," are indeed trademarked.

She said De Beers is going to defend its trademark, especially considering that sightholders and retailers are shouldering some of the cost of the program.

"Of course we're going to protect it," Morrison said. "How are we going to protect it? We're going to protect it legally."

The first stage of this legal defense is to send out cease-and-desist letters to any company De Beers learns is selling designs that could possibly infringe on Everlon.

"We are aware that people have infringed, and there's a process that has already started," she said.

Morrison would not disclose details on how many letters had been sent out or to what companies, but she did reveal that two companies that received such letters already have agreed to stop selling the offending designs.

She added that she doesn't believe all companies selling Everlon-like pieces are doing it out of "bad will," but rather that there may be some confusion as to how this new program works.

Unveiled in September, Everlon is De Beers' latest "big idea," intended to stimulate diamond jewelry sales as programs such as Journey and three-stone have done in the past.

"That model has been around for a long time, very successfully, and everybody's been a part of it," Morrison said.

Unlike past De Beers programs, however, Everlon is not open for everyone to duplicate.

Sightholders and retailers who want to sell Everlon had to pay to have access to the designs and marketing materials, as well as a license to create their own designs based on the Everlon theme. Meanwhile, those who did not choose to participate in the program cannot create Everlon pieces as they might have done with programs such as Journey.

This change, Morrison said, might have created some confusion in the marketplace.

She added that when creating the program, De Beers did forsee that it might need to take legal action to protect Everlon.

"We anticipated that it might be necessary, so we were ready and prepared to do it," Morrison said. "We've been doing this a long time, and the trade is used to working with us in a particular way. It's ingrained."
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