Copyright: Plans & Display Houses: At What Point Copying?

In the recent decision of Ron Englehart Pty Ltd v Enterprise Constructions (Aust) Pty Ltd [2010] FCA 820 (12 August 2010) Justice Jessup considered whether the plans and display house of the respondents substantially reproduced the applicant's plans and display house and also considering whether similarities between houses and plans justified inference that respondents had access to applicant's display house and plan and had substantially reproduced them.

The key question was whether the changes made by the managing director of the respondent to his original project home plans made it probable as a matter of inference that he had access to applicant's brochure and was copying features from it. The outcome was that his Honours found that valid architectural explanations could be made for the plan changes unrelated to the applicant’s plans and that in any event both sets of plans remained different in several respects. As a result it was held that copyright was not infringed.

Details of this case were noted in our Daily Alerting Service DAS available online to Intellectual Property Service subscribers.