Atty. Gregorio B. Austral, CPA
Can your house design be copied by your neighbor?
Our house is a major investment that we make once or twice only during our lifetime. Hence, we always make sure that the design of our house should suit to our taste. After all, this is where we rest after a hard day’s work. But if your neighbor really likes to build a house with the same or similar design as yours, can you prevent him from doing so?
It is a basic provision of law (RA 8293) that works of art, literary and artistic works are protected by law from the moment of creation. Once a mere idea or concept is manifested in some tangible form, such as a house design in an architectural plan, it is protected by copyright at the time when the design is expressed through the architectural drawings. The drawings definitely cannot just be copied without permission from the author, artist or creator. He has the exclusive right to make use of it.
However, once the house is constructed and its beautiful design is revealed to the public, nothing prevents the public from building a house of the same or similar design based on what they see since the copyright over the drawings does not extend any protection to the actual house constructed.
This is similar to the case of Pearl & Dean (Phil.) Inc. vs. Shoemart, Inc., 409 SCRA 231, Aug. 15, 2003, where Pearl and Dean owns the copyright over the technical drawings and specifications of advertising light boxes. Another company that was earlier contracted by Pearl & Dean to build its light boxes subsequently built its own similar light boxes which were supplied to SM which happened to be the customer of Pearl & Dean also. The Court ruled that the copyright over the drawings does not extend any protection to the actual light boxes built since if one voluntary discloses it to the public without adequate protection against infringement, the world is free to copy and use it with impunity. In this case, the Court said that Pearl & Dean should have secured first a patent for its invention, the light boxes, before disclosing it to the public.