I would now like to build with company B, using the plans from company A.
The question is, may I pass on these plans?
Or rather, not the entire plan, just the scanned house without any additional data.
Hello,
the "planning" – and its results, the planning documents, are legally a "
work". They are therefore subject to the Construction Contract Law, § 631 et seq. of the German Civil Code. The contractor owes the production (and delivery in a certain form), the client the payment.
That means as long as A has not received any money for his work, the "work" still belongs to A. That A does not want "his" work to be used by another party (here by B) free of charge (for him) is shown by the later mentioned notes on the plans. Whether such an addition is legally effective is, however, another question.
The protectability under
copyright for intellectual creations requires – as already nicely mentioned – a personal intellectual creative level. This is a question of fact – and in the case of basic, routine floor plans, this will likely be negated.
Separate from that is the area of
technical industrial property rights for the
intellectual property in intangible goods. There, protectability usually requires registration in a register, e.g., patents.
But even without registration, the right to use can of course be legitimately transferred and exploited. Thus, the right of use can be transferred with the work (house) – or separated from it (e.g., planning only), via licenses for the transferable usage rights – exclusively (to one user) or non-exclusively (= to multiple users). Without intellectual creative height or registration in a register, however, it is only conditionally protectable.
Many general contractors / construction companies deliberately / grudgingly make the first plans
free of charge in the offer phase, e.g., for acquisition reasons.
Legally, they already have a claim to payment (if nothing has been agreed, possibly tacitly depending on circumstances), § 612 German Civil Code. Even an architect usually wants to be paid for this, cf. the phases of the HOAI.
A gray area is certainly the further sub-question of the original poster regarding the "scanned house without further data". If A has not yet received any money, he will surely not find that good. What he then does with it (or can do) is another question of fact. And B will probably also have to transfer the plans themselves into his systems, create CAD drawings, etc.