Prefab house construction plans as a template - does that cause problems?

"Pandora's box" seems to be the standard answer to all questions... Thank you for the helpful and very detailed answer

Honest answer? The architect will certainly bill correctly for what he was commissioned to do.
At the time, we had our own ideas, our architect had some points where she really had good improvement suggestions, and with that we very quickly came to a successful design.
And yes, we had the brochure of another company as a basis for design discussion, whose basic concept we liked, but where some things had to be adapted to the plot. Among other things, the second balcony, which simply had to be there for the plot, as well as the roof pitch, which had to be adjusted to the development plan...
So the building’s external dimensions were changed from 8m x 11m to 8m x 10.5m, roof pitch from 25° to 30°, entrance moved from the eaves side to the gable side, stairs moved inside, plus a second balcony (yes, it is used a lot), and some other small details... The architect really had good ideas on how to simply improve the good basis even further.

;-) That may all be true - but I don't know if one has to discuss and sugarcoat gray areas here. Of course you can take the draft and move a wall - you won't become the intellectual property owner by doing so; unclear if many would lose sleep over that... it's similar with the HOAI. It's just a question of where you draw the line... throwing trash out of the car, fibbing a bit on the tax return, running a red light at night, finding a wallet and keeping the money, not pointing out the craftsman's calculation error (of course to their disadvantage), hitting a stranger’s car door in the parking lot and driving away - there were already scratches on it...

Not everything that limps is a comparison

One probably doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel, but the house, if you read the posts here. An absolute standard house at Company A surely looks pretty much the same as at Company Z – and the houses in between as well. There’s no great intellectual property behind that anymore. Just because copyright law rightly needs to be mentioned and understood again and again, one should be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. No one violates copyright law if they copy a Heinz von Heiden standard and have it redrawn properly by the planner. An architect at least bills such a design according to HOAI ;)

Good evening,

Legally, the plans are probably protected as stated in print...

Even if we were to implement it 1 to 1, the chance that the prefabricated company would ever catch wind of it would be low, right?

You have a strange understanding of mine & yours :confused:

There is a good and easily understandable summary by the Architects' Chamber BW about the copyrights of architects. Here is an excerpt:

"According to § 2 of the Copyright Act UrhG, buildings and the associated plans are protected works within the meaning of the Copyright Act if they represent a personal intellectual creation, that is, if they are "works of architecture."

According to Beigel, this requires:

"A personal intellectual creation that is produced by formative activity using artistic means of representation and is preferably intended for the aesthetic stimulation of emotion through perception; it is irrelevant whether the work serves a practical purpose alongside its aesthetic purpose. However, the aesthetic content of the work must reach such a degree that, according to the opinion of those receptive to art and somewhat familiar with artistic views, it can be considered an artistic achievement."

According to case law, a work of architecture exists if it stands out from the mass of everyday construction work and is the result of a personal intellectual creation or differs from average architectural work. An aesthetic content is therefore generally not required. So far, no copyright has been rejected because the building was too ugly.

The degree to which the artistic achievement is reflected in the work determines the individuality which is decisive for copyright protection; the practical purpose thus does not exclude art protection of a building.

[ ...]

Individual parts of a building can also be protected by copyright if they meet the above requirements and already constitute an independent work, separate from the overall building."

Sources/References: Architects' Chamber BW,
**Beigel, Copyrights of the Architect, Bauverlag 1984 Rn. 40 ff.

If I were you, for example, I wouldn’t want to tangle with Huf® or Davinci®.


Rhineland regards