Copyright Infringement

Posted by Aaron Sice on 27 November 2009

Tags: development application, drafting, house plans, subdivision plans

I get asked a lot about copyright infringement, unfortunately more on “how do I avoid it” rather than “someone’s taken your plans and used them”.

I’m a Designer. I work in a city where everyone in my industry is less than 2 degrees of separation from someone else in the same industry. I have respect for other people’s work and the amazing range of ways to provide solutions for a client brief. I love what I do and I have no intention of changing my profession.

I ask any potential client that asks me to “just change this bit, it’ll be enough” whether they think it would be okay for me to ruin my reputation if I got caught and if they have the other person/company's profit they just stole sitting in an account somewhere for when they get caught. I am happy to take your brief and come up with something that will fit your needs, but I cannot copy a plan and, say, rearrange the en-suite and the kitchen … then call it my own.

“But we won’t get caught, it’s not illegal, we’re changing more than 10%. Plus, I can pay cash.”

This is about the time where I ask them to leave, and try the builder they stole the plan from.

Let me say this upfront. You cannot “steal” someone’s potential profit from them. By taking their plan and building it without them, you have done just this. It is illegal. It is COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT.

Changing more than 10% of a plan does not make you immune to prosecution – that’s an old wives’ tale. We can attempt to copy elevations, design features, kitchens, en-suites etc into our OWN plan - sometimes one or two items at a time, even. Most builders don’t have a problem with this – after all, imitation is the greatest form of flattery. How many Architects have attempted to replicate a Prairie House? Or artists take a painting style similar to Dali or Monet…?

So how do we avoid copyright infringement?

You start with your own plan and add a bit of someone else’s. Not the other way around.

I’m not going to get into the appendices of the Copyright Acts – but the basics of it is this; if you’re taken to court over an infringement complaint, you must be able to PROVE that you started from scratch and ended up with something similar. Big ask – especially if all you have is a few newspaper clippings in your scrapbook and a cash transaction between yourself and your Architect and/or Draftsman.

Don’t laugh – I hear of this every day. The best one is where the client takes a hand-traced copy of another builder’s plan into a Designer/Architect/Draftsman and says “Here – it’s my plan, please draw”. Chances are, the person you just engaged to draw “your” plan, now has a copy of this plan and the request from you hidden in an email string – and can present this to indemnify themselves against any complaint.

This leaves you exposed and open to litigation, with the loaded barrel for recourse pointing straight back at you.

And there’ll be no sympathy from this corner, because you reap what you sow.