Houston home builder for celebrities wins $1.3M copyright suit

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

A federal district court has awarded $1.3 million to a Texas design firm in an architectural copyright case, according to Houston law firm Osha Liang.

In the lawsuit, Hewlett Custom Home Designs of Houston claimed that Frontier Custom Builders, Inc. infringed Hewlett's copyrighted designs in violation of federal law. Hewlett's clients include Fortune 500 executives as well as celebrities such as retired NBA star Charles Barkley, now an analyst with TNT's Inside the NBA.

A jury in U.S. District Judge Ewing Werlein Jr.'s courtroom on May 9 found that Frontier committed copyright infringement by constructing and marketing 19 houses that infringed Hewlett's copyrighted designs. Frontier's owner, Ronald Wayne Bopp, was also held personally liable for Frontier's activities.

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Houston-home-builder-for-celebrities-wins-1-3M-4539979.php

[Mulligan]

Let's see... 19 into $1.3 million equals $68,421 infringement penalty for each house built.

And that seems appropriate for this kind of egregious and serious violation of copyright.

On the other hand, when one's considering photographic images posted on inner pages of Mom and Pop websites...

A thumbnail on an inner page of a website getting 67 unique visitors a month, let's generously say, might be perhaps worth 1/100,000 the value of a copyrighted architectural plan.

So that thumbnail image using the terms of this particular judgment would be equivalently worth around 68 cents. Unless, perhaps, it was an exclusive picture of the Pope exorcising a demon from a Seattle lawyer and then it might be worth $1.25.

Now, how much moola are Getty, the copyright trolls, and the various individual speculative invoicers demanding per image these days?

I think in Getty's case it's around $800 for a thumbnail? And when "escalated" to McCormack Law the price (at least in my experience) triples.

I guess some cynics would say it's painfully obvious why so many companies and greedy individuals spend so much time sending out settlement demand letters.

[Peeved]

I guess some cynics would say it's painfully obvious why so many companies and greedy individuals spend so much time sending out settlement demand letters.

Also equally obvious would be why there is/was much "FREE SPEECH" in the form of humor, parody, as well as disdain for such a "business" and/or "individuals".

[Greg Troy (KeepFighting)]

There is a lot of this that happens in the building industry.  Back when I worked in new construction I would go into a home and recognize it as a home built by builder A only to find out the builder B saw how well it was selling and magically came up with the exact same plan.