Ask the Architect

Did architect steal our house design?

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Q. I’ve been noticing that many houses are being rebuilt, and that even though they’re by different designers, they look the same. In particular, a neighbor built a brand new house, and two years later the next-door neighbor, with a different architect, did the same house. Is that allowed? The first owners are unhappy about it. Isn’t there some kind of copyright protection? What can the first owner do?

A. Imitation is supposedly the sincerest form of flattery, but stealing, not so much! I recently learned that the real inventor of the telephone was an Italian immigrant who filed with the U.S. Patent Office in 1871, but hadn’t completed the papers or paid the $10 fee before a deadline because he was badly hurt in a steam boiler explosion on the Staten Island ferry. A worker in the patent office, familiar with the filing, waited for the expiration deadline to pass in 1874, and then filed the patent under his own name. That worker was Alexander Graham Bell. Congress passed a resolution to honor the real inventor, Antonio Meucci, in 2011.

Once those two houses have been standing, side by side, for a while, nobody recognizes which came first, and the real first designer, who put the time in to be creative, is forgotten. It happens all the time. There are federal copyright laws protecting this kind of work. But even though many architects have copyright notes on their plans, it rarely hinders someone from taking the idea. It’s a challenge to prove that your idea was taken, and even though there have been some successful cases, the time and money usually makes it unworthy. I’ve even noticed that some former employees have taken discs of details, which we spent several hours to produce, when they left. In plans I see from time to time from other firms, I’ve noticed that former employees didn’t even change the size or style of the lettering in the notes.

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