Legal aspects of planning preliminary services from prefabricated house providers

Some prefab house providers create a house design as a preliminary service. That means you receive a house design from the architect and a fixed price offer listing all equipment details without having signed a contract for work.
Assuming you as a customer have received such a preliminary service and want to obtain a comparison offer (e.g., as a basis for price negotiations):

1. Are you allowed to forward the plans and the offer to the second provider?
2. If you want to build the design planned by the first provider with the second provider, are you then legally obliged to buy the plans first?
3. Do you have a right to purchase the plans? That is, can the first provider simply refuse to sell the plans and thus invalidate a competing offer as an argument in price negotiations?
4. In practice, would it basically be possible to circumvent the aforementioned problems by the second provider slightly modifying the plans?

If you have any other tips regarding comparison offers and price negotiations, I would also be grateful.

Yes. That's how it is. This is the intellectual property of the planner. You have to pay him if someone else is going to use it. Borderline case: the planner posts floor plans online. Then he effectively makes them publicly usable. But legally also uncertain. I had seen a construction plan from a construction company xy as an example, which was really great. My general contractor made me two proposals, which I didn't like so much. I called the other one, said, I like your plan, may I give it to your colleague because I want to build like that? Or do I have to build with you then? He: Where do you want to build? I: here and there. He: Too far for me to drive. Let the colleague do it, he can take my plan. I: For free? He: Yes. So we were on the safe side.

The legal aspects are certainly included in the "gratis unterlagen". With a public floor plan, it is probably more difficult to prove. Because in some way, the standard floor plans keep repeating themselves. Otherwise, you change something small, move a wall by 5cm, and it is already a new floor plan. Besides, hardly anyone will sue over a floor plan, as the evidence becomes ridiculous. Except of course if someone is so stupid and takes the original plans with names, etc...

I haven't seen anything legal in the documents. Maybe in the terms and conditions, I need to take a look there. Actually, I mainly wanted to have the settlement offer as a negotiation argument. So, for that to work, should I first buy the plan and then negotiate? Or what do you think is the smartest approach?

Intellectual property that is protected by copyright must exhibit an individual character.
This is _not_ the case with these standardized floor plans, but also with custom-made designs that look standard.

Whether a project is visible on the internet or not is completely irrelevant.
Photographers who have to live from their life’s work also do not forfeit their copyright on their photo just because they make it public!

Stealing data from the internet is not always without consequences just because it is readily available online.

Every larger company that posts its designs on the internet knows that they will be printed out and further used. They even expect it.

However, if an architect creates an individual design, possibly tailored to a specific plot of land, there is an execution plan, and the character of the house is unique (this can also be just a special detail), then this is a violation of the Copyright Act.

In this respect, a distinction should be made between an individual preliminary performance and a "multiple copied" performance from the drawer.
But even a model house from a larger home builder or the design from the drawer can be individually unique and carry the character of the home-building company, which no other company possesses.

Therefore, one cannot make a blanket statement about a work that is protected by copyright (or not) without knowing it.

Regarding 3: Why should you have a right without having paid for anything?

Regarding 4: yes

Regarding 2: see above. What I get for free, I do not have to buy. However, already said it: if the copyrights are indicated there, then they should not leave your hands (passing on to third parties means what is stated on it).

Regarding 1: a home builder has their own construction performance description and can calculate for you within 10 minutes how expensive a 140 sqm house on a slab with 1 meter of sand-lime brick, 38-degree gabled roof, 4-meter-wide captain’s gable, clinkered with clinker xy and Kfw55 etc. will be.
For that, no design on paper is needed. Not even from the competitor. After all, they do not calculate individual bricks for you.
The rest is a modular system and individual equipment or sample selection.

All further answers should be morally examined by you yourself.

And: people know each other. Even competing companies talk to each other – after all, they are industry colleagues. In this respect, I would also pause a bit when something looks simple ;)

if you want to compare prices you just have to request a similar house for all inquiries. e.g. 140sqm single-family house with 150cm knee wall with the extras ... and these and those components. in the end you are left with only the complete dissection of the construction service description. what sounds cheaper at first may not be cheaper in the end. the differences lie in many details. a few classics that no one tells you at first but make a difference of several thousand in the end:

- price per sqm tiles
- scope of electrical work (sockets etc.)
- price per unit clinker
- which roof tiles are included? (the very simple ones without any protection are just ugly and mossy after 10 years)

and of course also very obvious things like included extras such as ventilation system etc...

we once itemized our offers in excel (really every single item) and then compared. we quickly realized that the cheap ones are not cheaper at all but simply sell less.