Following the ongoing suit between Tiffany & Co., and Costco, a U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain ruled that Costco Wholesale Corp. can continue with its stand of claiming ‘Tiffany setting’ as a generic term for a type of engagement ring setting and not a trademark of the high-end jewellery retailer Tiffany & Co., reports say.

In the ruling, Judge Swain stated that while she was not ‘endorsing Costco's claim’, it was sufficient to ‘frame a genuine factual dispute as to whether the terms ‘Tiffany' and/or ‘Tiffany setting' have a primarily generic meaning in the minds of members of the general public in the context of ring settings,’ reports say. The judge has denied Tiffany's bid for a summary dismissal basis the argument that "Tiffany setting" was a generic term, which Costco asserted as a counterclaim in a previous lawsuit.

Tiffany sued Costco in February 2013 in New York federal court. The suit was over Costco selling diamond and platinum engagement rings at its jewelry counters with signs labeling them as "Platinum Tiffany" rings, since Tiffany never sold its rings through Costco. It sued Costco for monetary damages and alleged it sold counterfeit Tiffany rings. In its defense Costco had stated that it used the word "Tiffany" in a generic sense referring to the setting of the rings first created by Tiffany founder Charles Lewis Tiffany, in which a single gemstone is mounted on multiple, slender prongs, reports say.