Oct. 12 -- Santa Fe Goldworks and Eden On The Plaza flank the entrance to the downtown Santa Fe Arcade like glittering twin sisters, beckoning passersby with brightly lit displays of high-end jewelry with a Southwestern flair.
Similar inventory can be found a few doors down at Diva Diamonds and Jewels and Maverick's of Santa Fe, both also located on East San Francisco Street.
However, the competition between the shops, located just steps away from each other in the city's most heavily trafficked tourist area, has spilled over into federal court, with one of the shop owners accusing the others of stealing his designs.
Santa Fe Goldworks founder David Griego has filed a lawsuit accusing Eden On The Plaza -- and Turquoise Trail Jewelry, located a few blocks away on Old Santa Fe Trail -- of selling knockoffs of his copyrighted and trademarked designs.
The lawsuit also names Mark Suleiman -- who owns Diva and manages Maverick's -- as a defendant, saying Suleiman has a financial interest in Eden On The Plaza and finances its operations, making him vicariously liable for the alleged copyright infringement.
In particular, Griego says in a complaint filed recently in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque, the shops are selling jewelry featuring a distinctive zigzag motif he trademarked decades ago as part of his "River of Love" collection, which features earrings, bracelets, pendants and rings inlaid with opal, turquoise and other semi-precious stones, sometimes set with diamonds in designs that blend traditional and contemporary Santa Fe style.
The stores and their owners make and sell "derivative works" based on his original designs, Griego's lawsuit says, and have "realized unlawful profits" from the unauthorized reproduction and sale of the works, eroding the value of Goldworks' own brand.
Griego is asking the court to find the defendants unlawfully reproduced and sold his designs, ban them from continuing to produce and sell confusingly similar products in the future and order them to pay an unspecified amount of damages.
Turquoise Trail Jewelry owner Ahmed Shawabkeh declined to comment on the lawsuit Thursday. He told a reporter to call his lawyer but hung up when asked the attorney's name. Suleiman did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Eden On The Plaza manager Majed Hamdouni -- also a named defendant in the lawsuit -- called the litigation "a silly and very beatable case," saying the zigzag motif has long been used in Native American art and jewelry to represent a river or mountain range and certainly doesn't belong to Griego.
"You can't take something that existed prior to [your artwork] and call it yours. It's a geometrical design. It's extremely pretentious to think you can say, 'Hey all the zigzags you saw in the past, this is mine now,' " Hamdouni said.
Eden does sell rings with zigzags, Hamdouni said, but they are not identical zigzags to the ones found on Griego's work, which in the world of design means they are not copies.
"It's the nature of the beast," Hamdouni said. "Everything is the same with a little bit of alteration here and there."
As long as the designs are substantially different, they don't constitute copyright infringement, Hamdouni said. He added Eden is strictly a retail outlet and doesn't manufacture anything it sells.
Hamdouni said he respects all his neighbors, including Griego, but said the lawsuit isn't very neighborly.
"For us it's just a nuisance that we have to go through all this," Hamdouni said. "I would like for [Griego] to apologize, for making such a pretentious claim."