PhotoScribe Technologies has been awarded a patent for new technology that will let jewelers—as well as consumers—sniff out diamonds with counterfeit inscriptions.
“There’s been a lot of reports about diamonds with fake inscriptions,” says PhotoScribe CEO David Benderly. “Lately people have become more sophisticated, and they have been inscribing synthetic diamonds and passing them off as natural diamonds with the same specifications.”
These fakes can fool all but the most trained gemologists, he says.
“GIA collects thousands of data points for every diamond, so they have absolutely no problem determining if a diamond is [connected to the report]. But your average store owner may not be able to identify it.”
PhotoScribe’s solution—called the Unique Secured Product ID—involves overt security features—the standard PhotoScribe inscription—as well as covert ones—an invisible bar code that can be read by a special app.
‘It’s just another layer for security for gemstones,” Benderly says. “Security always comes multilayered. It’s like with a dollar bill, it’s never one thing—there’s the color, the watermark. This gives a tool so even the consumer can verify the diamond.”
Ideally, the identifying security feature will come from the diamond itself, he says: “It can be an inclusion in the diamond or a specific diamond junction or facets that we recognize.”
Last year, PhotoScribe announced it had developed a “subsurface” inscription for diamonds that can’t be polished off.
Top: A part of PhotoScribe’s patent application (photo courtesy of PhotoScribe)
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