No, Costco, You Can’t Just Call Your Jewelry “Tiffany”

Photo credit: Mike Mozart, CC BY 2.0.

When I was a very young blogger, back in the day when we still had, like, blog rings, I thought that the prettiest color to use on the background of my Blogspot Dot Com template was the pale, almost iridescent blue-green from the Tiffany ad that I’d seen on a New York Times sidebar.

So I screenshotted the page, used Color Picker to get the hex code, and dropped it into Blogspot.

I did not know that I had stolen a trademarked color; Tiffany Blue is in fact one of the more famous trademarked colors in the world, and you need a license to use it. (In my defense—and, at the time, to my disappointment—that single pixel of Tiffany Blue I color picked didn’t transfer the full brilliance of the shade. My blog background looked flat and kinda sea-greenish.)

Costco, on the other hand, should have known better. As the Washington Post reports:

Costco must pay the storied jewelry company Tiffany & Co. more than $19 million for selling about 2,500 diamond rings falsely identified on store signs as “Tiffany” rings, a federal judge ruled Monday.

Costco’s management “displayed at best a cavalier attitude toward Costco’s use of the Tiffany name in conjunction with ring sales and marketing,” U.S. District Judge of the Southern District of New York Laura Taylor Swain wrote in her opinion.

Costco’s argument, believe it or not, was that the term “Tiffany” had become generic. It no longer represented an exclusive, aspirational jewelry brand that people view as a once-in-a-lifetime purchase—you might remember Lisa Rowan’s Billfold piece about saving for a Tiffany & Co. ring—but, as Costco tried to claim, a standard “ring setting.” Tiffany & Co. did popularize a specific type of jewelry setting, and if you’ve got a ring with a stone held in place by little metal grippers you’ve probably got a setting that derives from that Tiffany design, but… you still can’t call that a Tiffany ring.

What’s Costco going to do about this?

Following the ruling, Costco said it would appeal, calling the decision the “product of multiple errors” on the part of the judge.

In the meanwhile, we suggest buying your jewelry at Fred Meyer.

Support The Billfold

The Billfold continues to exist thanks to support from our readers. Help us continue to do our work by making a monthly pledge on Patreon or a one-time-only contribution through PayPal.