In Paul Segal's "Professional Practice" book, he writes that "...we were pleased to find that the 1986 copyright law protects architects and their clients even from copying without plans" (page 86, in reference to a house that had been built from copying plans in the building department from the town over).
What law is this exactly, and how enforceable is it? Have there been cases where building owners or architects have been sued for being "too similar"?
Oct 22, 15 2:35 am
U.S. Copyright Law
There is the provision for both pictorial works and 'architectural works'. You will want to read up on both. Your plans themselves are protected by pictorial works and written works copyright as a composition as well as unique or distinctive features.
The building's design and as a structure is also protected under the 'architectural works' provisions of the U.S. Copyright law.
How enforceable is it? Legally.... fines upto $100,000 per offense? Potential jail time for copyright infringers do exist, especially if the work is registered at the U.S. Copyright office.
However.... copyright laws are enforced to a limited extent in our professional field because most of us are too damn poor to hire attorneys to sue over copyright at a federal court and neither the clients nor your professional peers respects federal laws like the copyright laws. They'll just happily infringe without fear because they know you aren't going to do anything about it..... UNLESS you do and have the money resource to do so.
We don't generally make 'products'. We make one off designs. We don't market and sell plans in the masses unless you get into house plans selling market where you sell plans like selling books and engage in the publishing. Our one-off approach makes copyright laws rather worthless. It isn't like writing computer software and selling millions of copies.
People don't tend to give a sh-t about copyrights unless what is copyrighted is producing millions of dollars a year of income or more. Sadly, it is this attitude that you'll find a lot of. However, if your work has any unique or creativity involved then it is copyrightable and you would have copyright and as professionals we should respect the copyright of the work of others.
I would recommend placing a copyright note. Copyright infringement is a serious legal matter and should be taken serious. However, you will undoubtably here people deliberately countering what I say here because they don't like me.
Copyrights become particularly important if the particular plans are sold to multiple customers or otherwise used to make multiple homes/buildings from that particular plan. For example, a housing tract may use 3-5 base plans which each encompass maybe 3-5 subtle variants. From then most variations from that are paint colors. So,, several dozen can be made and built off of just 3-5 plan sets in just a couple blocks worth of tract development.
When you sell house plans across the nation or internationally, copyright may become even more important especially if you are actually making a significant deal of money from the plans and then the damage of someone violating your plans can become measurable... easily.
For one off plans, it become moot when challenged about what loss you incurred from copyright infringement? If you aren't actively selling plans like you sell books and such, it becomes difficult to measure what losses you would incur from each occurance of a copyright violation.
If you weren't selling the plans, your loss is most often going to be $0.00.
Copyright laws are primarily concerned with defining rights of the copyright holder, limitations of those rights and about equitable restitution in cases of infringement violations. Therefore, financial loss is a staple factor in copyright violation cases.
Oct 22, 15 3:45 am
The above is not meant to be an absolutely exhaustive description of the copyright laws. In addition, some comments in my post above is probably overly simplistic but to convey a general pattern in a our profession and collective consensus pattern from previous comments on this topic on this forum and ALL the other architecture forums.
There are architects and designers that respects the copyright laws but there are those that don't. As for being too poor... well maybe an over statement but as a profession, we just don't typically make the money and nor do many of our projects are such that it would be seen as a national or internationally published commodity in which copyright laws were established for. The problem of enforcing federal copyright laws is that it must be in federal courts and federal court system is not for dealing with local boutique mom & pop shop businesses which a lot of architecture businesses are essentially. This leaves the issue to be of importance to a minority of architectural and related businesses. The bigger ones.... yeah. The small ones.... nah.
When we produce one off designs like fine art. When your work is like that, unless you're famous like Pablo Picasso or Vincent van Gogh, your work is probably not going to have much value in that domain and then you look at publishing value.... which is non-existent as your work is not commercially published and you can't describe a loss if you had a copyright infringer infringe on your copyright because you can't declare loss in sales because you don't have a market price of selling. If it is not priced than it is essentially $0.00 unless you put a price tag. If you don't sell the plans, you don't have loss sales impact. After all, you neither were in a position of a gain because there was no potential sale. It is like a store without a product to sell. You can't declare a loss in sales if you have nothing available to sell. All you have is whatever the laws and the judge is willing to reward you. When it comes to restitution, all you can claim is lawyer fees. The rest of the penalty to the copyright infringer is a statutory fine for violating the law (mostly a fine the courts impose to pay for the cost of the case and as a deterrent of future infringement).
Copyright becomes more imperative to those who sells plans because they have more options for restitution like ability to validate a loss in sales potential from which can be restituted. Add to that, when copyright is registered with copyright office, they have more options than not being registered.
Copyright laws are serious legal matters but there is a pattern of apathy and borderline wanton disregard / disrespect of copyright laws and federal laws in general that permeates the architecture profession which I have observed over the years not just here on this forum.
shellarchitect
Oct 22, 15 9:11 am
AIA did a series on the subject, can't post the link for some reason tho.
Just Google 'architect sued for copyright infringement' and you'll get some good stuff
"Most of the similarities between Plaintiff’s and Defendants’ designs are features of all colonial homes, or houses generally. So long as Plaintiff was seeking to design a colonial house, he was bound to certain conventions. He cannot claim copyright in those conventions."
Beware the effluent of the Counselor-of-Clatsop.
midlander
Oct 23, 15 12:27 am
this is a good explanation of what is not a very clear realm of law:
like most good lawsuits, this ended quietly on unclear terms. but note the court had found merit to the suit sufficient to proceed to trial. the parties withdrew before that happened :(
In Paul Segal's "Professional Practice" book, he writes that "...we were pleased to find that the 1986 copyright law protects architects and their clients even from copying without plans" (page 86, in reference to a house that had been built from copying plans in the building department from the town over).
What law is this exactly, and how enforceable is it? Have there been cases where building owners or architects have been sued for being "too similar"?
U.S. Copyright Law
There is the provision for both pictorial works and 'architectural works'. You will want to read up on both. Your plans themselves are protected by pictorial works and written works copyright as a composition as well as unique or distinctive features.
The building's design and as a structure is also protected under the 'architectural works' provisions of the U.S. Copyright law.
How enforceable is it? Legally.... fines upto $100,000 per offense? Potential jail time for copyright infringers do exist, especially if the work is registered at the U.S. Copyright office.
However.... copyright laws are enforced to a limited extent in our professional field because most of us are too damn poor to hire attorneys to sue over copyright at a federal court and neither the clients nor your professional peers respects federal laws like the copyright laws. They'll just happily infringe without fear because they know you aren't going to do anything about it..... UNLESS you do and have the money resource to do so.
We don't generally make 'products'. We make one off designs. We don't market and sell plans in the masses unless you get into house plans selling market where you sell plans like selling books and engage in the publishing. Our one-off approach makes copyright laws rather worthless. It isn't like writing computer software and selling millions of copies.
People don't tend to give a sh-t about copyrights unless what is copyrighted is producing millions of dollars a year of income or more. Sadly, it is this attitude that you'll find a lot of. However, if your work has any unique or creativity involved then it is copyrightable and you would have copyright and as professionals we should respect the copyright of the work of others.
I would recommend placing a copyright note. Copyright infringement is a serious legal matter and should be taken serious. However, you will undoubtably here people deliberately countering what I say here because they don't like me.
Copyrights become particularly important if the particular plans are sold to multiple customers or otherwise used to make multiple homes/buildings from that particular plan. For example, a housing tract may use 3-5 base plans which each encompass maybe 3-5 subtle variants. From then most variations from that are paint colors. So,, several dozen can be made and built off of just 3-5 plan sets in just a couple blocks worth of tract development.
When you sell house plans across the nation or internationally, copyright may become even more important especially if you are actually making a significant deal of money from the plans and then the damage of someone violating your plans can become measurable... easily.
For one off plans, it become moot when challenged about what loss you incurred from copyright infringement? If you aren't actively selling plans like you sell books and such, it becomes difficult to measure what losses you would incur from each occurance of a copyright violation.
If you weren't selling the plans, your loss is most often going to be $0.00.
Copyright laws are primarily concerned with defining rights of the copyright holder, limitations of those rights and about equitable restitution in cases of infringement violations. Therefore, financial loss is a staple factor in copyright violation cases.
The above is not meant to be an absolutely exhaustive description of the copyright laws. In addition, some comments in my post above is probably overly simplistic but to convey a general pattern in a our profession and collective consensus pattern from previous comments on this topic on this forum and ALL the other architecture forums.
There are architects and designers that respects the copyright laws but there are those that don't. As for being too poor... well maybe an over statement but as a profession, we just don't typically make the money and nor do many of our projects are such that it would be seen as a national or internationally published commodity in which copyright laws were established for. The problem of enforcing federal copyright laws is that it must be in federal courts and federal court system is not for dealing with local boutique mom & pop shop businesses which a lot of architecture businesses are essentially. This leaves the issue to be of importance to a minority of architectural and related businesses. The bigger ones.... yeah. The small ones.... nah.
When we produce one off designs like fine art. When your work is like that, unless you're famous like Pablo Picasso or Vincent van Gogh, your work is probably not going to have much value in that domain and then you look at publishing value.... which is non-existent as your work is not commercially published and you can't describe a loss if you had a copyright infringer infringe on your copyright because you can't declare loss in sales because you don't have a market price of selling. If it is not priced than it is essentially $0.00 unless you put a price tag. If you don't sell the plans, you don't have loss sales impact. After all, you neither were in a position of a gain because there was no potential sale. It is like a store without a product to sell. You can't declare a loss in sales if you have nothing available to sell. All you have is whatever the laws and the judge is willing to reward you. When it comes to restitution, all you can claim is lawyer fees. The rest of the penalty to the copyright infringer is a statutory fine for violating the law (mostly a fine the courts impose to pay for the cost of the case and as a deterrent of future infringement).
Copyright becomes more imperative to those who sells plans because they have more options for restitution like ability to validate a loss in sales potential from which can be restituted. Add to that, when copyright is registered with copyright office, they have more options than not being registered.
Copyright laws are serious legal matters but there is a pattern of apathy and borderline wanton disregard / disrespect of copyright laws and federal laws in general that permeates the architecture profession which I have observed over the years not just here on this forum.
AIA did a series on the subject, can't post the link for some reason tho. Just Google 'architect sued for copyright infringement' and you'll get some good stuff
http://www.architectmagazine.com/business/new-york-architect-loses-copyright-infringement-lawsuit_o
"Most of the similarities between Plaintiff’s and Defendants’ designs are features of all colonial homes, or houses generally. So long as Plaintiff was seeking to design a colonial house, he was bound to certain conventions. He cannot claim copyright in those conventions."
Beware the effluent of the Counselor-of-Clatsop.
this is a good explanation of what is not a very clear realm of law:
http://www.architectmagazine.com/practice/too-close-for-comfort_o
like most good lawsuits, this ended quietly on unclear terms. but note the court had found merit to the suit sufficient to proceed to trial. the parties withdrew before that happened :(
Also might want to check out Hey, that's mine! Brian Newman, Archinect Sessions's Legal Correspondent, on who owns architectural designs
Cheers all - appreciate it.