MCM attorney tells how to guard against copyright lawsuits
Architects, builders and others in the design business should watch out for architectural copyright lawsuits, a type of intellectual property claim that’s on the rise.
So says Holly Newman, an attorney with Mackall, Crounse & Moore in Minneapolis.
Newman and fellow MCM attorney Ben Patrick are fresh off a victory for Bloodgood Sharp Buster, a Des Moines-based architecture firm that was sued along with others for $32 million for copyright infringement.
Rottlund Homes of Minnesota accused the architects and home builder Town & Country of Minnesota of copying Rottlund’s plans for a townhome design. The jury rejected the claim Dec. 14, Newman says.
Take note of the damages sought, Newman urges. That’s a “business-ending amount” for most professional services firms, which don’t typically have liquid assets to pay even part of a sizable award.
Perhaps more important, no designer wants to be accused of ripping off others.
“They take pride in being innovators. The most important thing for them is that the world knows they didn’t copy,” Newman says about Bloodgood Sharp Buster.
Newman says builders, architects, engineers and related designers “can and should” guard themselves against copyright lawsuits, because they’re costly to litigate and damaging to reputations.
She advises designers to keep general research materials, such as brochures or floor plans from competing home builders, separate from the actual work file for each project. Such materials are ubiquitous in the building world, where clients show what they want by ripping out pictures from magazines and ads. But when a competitor’s floor plan is in a designer’s project file, it looks bad for the designer.
Detailed archives of all steps of the design process are a must, she says, starting with the hand drawings, with dates included. In this case such files were keys to winning the victory.
Finally she encourages designers to consider their work once they’re finished, before they show the client, to satisfy themselves that they didn’t copy.
Holly Newman, Mackall, Crounse & Moore: 612.305.1450; hjn@mcmlaw.com; www.mcmlaw.com
