Re:De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds
by zentiggr on Wednesday May 30, 2018 @10:50AM
(#17188102)
When has deBeers not taken any and every route to maintaining their cartel?
Admittedly their marketing scheme is under a little more pressure with the various articles about their "interesting" past and price fixing schemes, but that's a drop in the bucket compared to their decades of propaganda.
They will find some way, openly or through any back channel they can find or manufacture, to control as much as they can. Plus or minus further monitoring and exposes.
Re:De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds
by jimhefferon on Wednesday May 30, 2018 @09:09AM
(#17187358)
> tremendous legal gymnastics
I'm with you so far.
The most important commercial cut (the brilliant) was described in Marcel Tolowsky's 1919 book Diamond Design, so would not be copyrightable without some tremendous legal gymnastics. De Beers could dream up some "improvement" to the brilliant cut and trademark it, but there really isn't much room for improvement. The cut that Tolowsky described is very, very close to the mathematical ideal for brilliance and fire. Most of the later optimisations in diamond modelling are in the public domain.