As with music and films, house plans are protected by the Canadian Copyright Law, as specified in a section reserved for this at http://www.drummonddesigns.com/copyrights.html  Not many people are aware of this fact and this is why I wanted to make this the subject of my first communiqué.

To sum up, when you make the purchase of a home plan you cannot photocopy or resell it.  A construction contractor cannot build more than one home from a home plan and he cannot modify it without first obtaining a licence authorizing such modifications.  Moreover, no one can consult a designer, architectural technician or architect with a photo or an image of one of Drummond Designs’ models to have it reproduced or have a similar model drawn up, even with slight modifications.  I invite you to consult the PDF document included in the Copyrights section via this link.

Through our blog, I wish to address construction contractors as well as designers, architectural technicians and residential architects, who are numerous in visiting our Internet site; how can our firm enforce respect of its copyrights and allow you to legally serve your customers?  As you know, plagiarism is an immense grey zone in our line of work and copyrights are not well known in this industry.  Some will say that misreading copyright laws suits certain businesses, but we make it our duty to educate our customers on this subject.

I invite you to send me your comments and propose ideas which will make life easier for all parties involved who want to work honestly at improving our architectural heritage.  We have excellent lawyers who presently have several plagiarism pursuits in hand, but we are more inclined towards finding practical solutions with our eventual customers rather than to pursue each offender.

Thank you for your attention and I am eager to hear from you !

Yves Carignan
President and General Manager
Drummond Designs Inc.

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