A court in the European Union has ruled in favor of Silicon Valley tech giant Apple in a dispute over whether or not interior design can be trademarked and protected under intellectual property laws. According to CNET.com, Apple’s trendy, sci-fi inspired “Genius Bars,” what normal businesses refer to as stores, cannot be replicated by any other business without infringing on the Apple brand.
Just as Houzz reports that 83% of homeowners seek out home remodeling services to improve the look and feel of their homes, so do huge corporations, like Apple, use design and build services to improve the appearance and marketability of their brand to customers. With the decision out of the EU, many are left wondering whether or not home remodeling ideas, like those used in corporate spaces, can be similarly covered under intellectual property laws.
Don’t Interior Home Designers Have the Same Right to Intellectual Property?
As the Artists’ Rights Society of New York points out, any work of art, be it a book, painting, or carving, is protected under copyright law from the second it is put into “fixed, tangible form.” In short, as soon as the idea transitions from a form in the mind to something in reality, copyright and intellectual property laws apply.
That being the case, it could be argued that interior home design should be covered under the same laws that allowed Apple to trademark its storefronts’ design. There is little doubt that what design and build contractors do is a form of art, after all. Even so, interior home design is rife with designers modifying the work of others or copying it altogether.
In theory, interior home designers should be able to protect their work in the exact same way as Apple. The issue? As HongKiat, a popular business website, suggests, home designers work as independent contractors. When meeting the $19 billion annual demand for home improvements and redesigns in the United States, a designer, more often than not, agrees to provide work without any attachment to that work after the job is completed. Just as many freelance writers lose their copyright claims to articles or ghost written fiction after the contract is completed, many argue that the same holds true when working with an independent interior home designer.
Do you think businesses, whether giant corporations or independent contractors, should be able to patent their interior design work? Let us know in the comments below.
