Intellectual Property Rights

[jennifer Bloch]

i would recommend writing the note:  “DESIGN ONLY. NOT FOR CONSTRUCTION” on each of your drawings unless your drawings are Construction Documents or unless they are being used to attain approval from Building or Planning. This note will clearly speak to the fact that you are not intending the drawing to be built as drawn and will help prove (if you ever need to do so) that you are not liable. However the note in your contract will help protect you too.

You can also put a copyright mark on all of your drawings. You might also create a note in your contract that clearly states that you remove yourself from responsibility should a client choose another contractor.

Being burned feels so awful – and losing control over your own design is equally as bad. perhaps you could discuss with your client the benefits (beyond cost) of having the designer control the construction and installation of a custom feature. and perhaps your client will see the value in this…

best wishes.

[toby]

The OP has an uncompensated work issue, not a copyright issue.  It really doesn’t matter if the railing is ever constructed. 

Jason, are you sure about the first paragraph you wrote ?  

If I buy a book, I can copy the pages for making my notes on.  What I cannot do is copy the book and sell/handout the copies for others to avoid the purchase of said book.

Works for plans too.  There should be no legal issues with a client making copies of plans to hand off to various contractors for bidding purposes if the client has compensated me for that design.

However, if that client owns two properties that are very similar, they cannot legally contract(buy) for plans for one property, and then reuse those same plans without compensation.  This could be applied to work within a single property.

Similarly, if a contractor receives a set of plans for bidding purposes, they cannot perform work according to those plans on another project (compensated or not).  

asking for compensation for every bid set seems a bit too much.

[Author]

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