Wendy wrote:
Vitruvius wrote:
Architects should really latch on to the copyright bandwagon. Our work is exactly the type of effort it's intended to promote and protect.
Guess what? US copyright law already protects all intellectual property and any sort of creative work as belonging solely to the creator. And you don't even have to register copyrights; they already exist, just by virtue of you having created the work, regardless of who has commissioned or paid for the work to be done.
Wendy
I believe that is sorta the way it works, depending on what you were expecting to collect should you actually take someone to court. It has been awhile since I read up on it, but there is a window of 90 days (60?) that you would actually need to register the work to have the "full" copyright privileges.... hummm here is a link and a copy/paste that explains it. An issue is you can't collect attorney fees without registering the work, and they can make it a complete waste of energy.. so it's not that automatic in reality. Personally, and people steal my stock plans all the time (I even see them published under another name), it is too much effort to win that war, so I turn it over to the karma gods and open a beer... it is just not worth living that energy.
Registration of the architectural work with the U.S. Copyright Office, while not required for copyright protection, is a prerequisite to filing an infringement lawsuit. If the copyright is not registered before the act of infringement, the damages recoverable are limited to actual damages suffered by the copyright owner plus profits derived by the infringer. If the copyright is registered before the infringement occurs, the copyright owner may elect to recover statutory damages (up to $20,000 per infringement or, if the infringement is willful, up to $100,000 per infringement) and is entitled to recover his or her attorneys' fees.
In the past, design professionals who prevailed on claims against those copying their drawings have recovered actual damages based on the cost of preparing the original drawings, plus the profits made by the infringer due to the copying. If damages calculated this way are insufficient to justify the cost of litigation, it will be important to register the copyright before the infringement to preserve the right to recover statutory damages and attorneys' fees.
Copyright notice, while no longer a prerequisite for protection, is necessary to preclude the defense of "innocent infringement. " If an infringer proves reliance on lack of copyright notice on the work, statutory damages and attorneys' fees are not recoverable, but the infringer is still subject to injunction and is liable for actual profits derived from the infringement.
http://www.aepronet.org/pn/vol5-no2.html
