House Design Rip?
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- TheBlueOne
Quick background - I work for a design/build construction firm. Last year we built a custom designed house as the general contractor for another architectural firm...
OK, so I go out for lunch today and the guy at the table next to me strikes up a conversation. Says he's a mason, etc...then he hands me his business card. On his business card is a picture of the custom designed house we built. I'm staring at it as this guy is talking and then I ask him - "Nice house here, you built this?"
"Oh yeah...did alot of work on that! We're very proud of it."
I pocketed the card and then called bullshit on the guy. Told him that was a custom specced house, we were the GC's and I don't know this jackhole from Adam and told him to remove that image from his business cards and not to try to pass off other people's work as his own. It went downhill form there...
Question, so we have any legal recourse here? I mean we don't own the house obviously, and another architect designed it. We just built it. Not sure of the law here...furthermore I'm really curious as to where the guy got the picture of the house from - would be real unhappy if some design guy is using it as clip art, but again, not sure of any legal ins and out on this one...
- e-pill0
hey blue, side note, last summer you were talking about one of your clients who were trying to purchase c4 or something like that, what ever happened to that gig?
- Hahaha!! We're building their house. They're still nuts though. :)TheBlueOne
- hahaha nice! did they get the c4?e-pill
- No! haha...we got it blasted for them in time...TheBlueOne
- harlequino0
"It went downhill from there..."
Did you get to use that combat training?
Leg is probably still tender, though.
- MSTRPLN0
so how did the rest of the lunch go?
- locustsloth0
Did he cop to the fact that he had nothing to do with it or did he maintain that he worked on it? If you as the GC can't take legal action, couldn't the masons you actually used? i mean, this guy is aking credit for their work specifically. Or you could just let other GC's know that this guy is full of shite so no one evr hires him
- e-pill0
to the above...
what was the guy's reaction from what you said?
was it the same house?- He denied it, then agreed to my accusation. Yeah. Exact same house.TheBlueOne
- TheBlueOne0
He owned up to the fact he didn't work on it and then just said "Hey, it's just a picture.."
I don't think we have any legal standing on it per se, other than the guy just being unethical about it. Just curious though are houses/buildings or design thereof copyrightable?
- houses are publ;ic per se so hard to claim images being unique. anyone could take same.********
- houses are publ;ic per se so hard to claim images being unique. anyone could take same.
- harlequino0
How would characterize your "world" in terms of architecture and construction, and the people with whom you work? High end? Middle ground? Shiesters?
I tend to think that if it's already a back stabbing industry, not much you can do about it, except spread the word about his company and muddy the waters. At least that's the way it was back when I was in the construction biz.
- High end. Everything we do is custom spec in the $8-12 million dollar range.TheBlueOne