US 8,577,689 B1Granted

Jewelry registration, verification and recovery system and method

AssigneeEdward M. Czarnetzky

InventorEdward M. Czarnetzky

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Abstract

A jewelry registration, verification and recovery system is disclosed, which includes a coding system that summarizes the physical characteristics of any piece of jewelry. The code includes various positions, with each position corresponding to a physical characteristic, such as the type of jewelry, the weight, the color of the metal, and so forth. Each position (or category) has a predetermined number of alphanumeric digits (or values) in the code, such as one, two, and so forth. A database is established to house the codes and locations of as many pieces of jewelry as possible, with nationwide, or even worldwide entries. In the event of a loss or theft of a particular piece of jewelry, the code (and optionally the location) of the lost piece is supplied to the database, which returns each database entry having the same code as the lost piece, along with its location and an indication if it has been reported stolen or missing, optionally within a particular time window. In this manner, a pawn shop may easily and quickly verify that a particular jewelry item brought in for sale is not stolen, prior to purchasing it.

A loss recover control management system for recovery of a pieces of jewelry without marking the jewelry in any way, including a computer having a processor and memory, an input and output device, comprising:

a. creating a data table comprising a plurality of physical characteristics of the piece of jewelry, the plurality including at least a description, a weight and a color;
each characteristic being assigned a particular one digit code, said one digit code corresponding to a digit in a concatenated multi-digit code comprising a plurality of characteristics and their parameters for each digit of the code;
b. inputting data collected from examination of said jewelry, assigning said concatenated multi-digit code to the piece of jewelry, and storing the concatenated multi-digit code assigned to the jewelry into a database on a computer, the code having a plurality of digital positions with a one-to-one correspondence with the plurality of physical characteristics as available from retrieval of the data table;
c. inputting a digitized image of the jewelry into the data base and linking said digitized image with said concatenated multi-digit code;
d. storing the concatenated multi-digit code linked to said digitized image into said database on said computer;
and
e. storing owner information into said computer and linking said concatenated multi-digit code to owner information;
f. assessing a recovered piece of jewelry against the data table and assigning it a recovered concatenated multi-digit code based on its characteristics;
g. searching said recovered concatenated multi-digit code in said data base;
h. comparing near matching stored concatenated multi-digit codes with said recovered concatenated multi-digit code and displaying associated digitized image of said stored codes to the digitized image of the recovered jewelry,
so that a determination can be made if the recovered jewelry matches jewelry in the data base without marking the jewelry with any concatenated multi-digit codes.

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Abstract

Claims22