Intellectual property

Architectural design - unique - capable of protection by copyrightJones v Tower Hamlets London Borough Council and another: ChD (Mr Michel Kallipetis QC sitting as a deputy High Court judge): 10 October 2000

The claimant designed several housing developments which were subsequently taken over by the first defendant.

The claimant brought an action alleging that in completing the developments the first defendant had breached his copyright in a number of respects by copying his design set out in his architectural drawings, including his design of a wrap- around partition for a bathroom.

J.

Henry Trumpington (instructed by Quinn Mantion) for the claimant.

Mary Vitoria QC (instructed by the acting head of legal services, Tower Hamlets London Borough Council) for the first defendant.

Held, that copyright subsisted not in ideas but in the form in which they were expressed, and the law did not restrict the application and development of architectural ideas, concepts and styles; that while it was legitimate to absorb architectural concepts and styles from another's plans and then apply them in drawing up an original design, copying a substantial part of another's plans, even from memory, was not; that the court should therefore take particular care to identify what copying had in fact taken place and consider whether each allegedly infringing drawing was a copy of the whole or a substantial part of claimant's work; that, although subconscious copying could infringe a copyright, where there was a real possibility of independent design strong evidence of copying would be required and a high degree of familiarity with the allegedly plagiarised designs was a threshold for such a claim; that the wrap-around bathroom partition design was unique and a visually significant part of the design of the house, capable of protection by copyright, and was so striking that the only possible inference on the evidence was that it had been copied and the claimant's copyright thereby infringed; but that on the evidence his claim failed in all other respects.