Construction Research Congress 2020
Review of Copyright Challenges in AECO Industry and Prospective Developments for Building Information Modeling (BIM)
Publication: Construction Research Congress 2020: Project Management and Controls, Materials, and Contracts
ABSTRACT
Protection of intellectual properties has always been a major concern for innovators and designers in the architecture, engineering, construction, and operation (AECO) industry. Intellectual properties have been categorized under patents, trademarks, and copyright under copyright law of the United States. As an artistic effort, architectural designs could be protected under the copyright category to avoid unauthorized reproduction or reuse of the designs in any format other than its designated function in a contract. While the copyright stipulation has prevented a lion share of conflicts since 1970s, protecting the architectural designs is still a point of debate in the construction industry and violation of copyright is still a subject of struggles. Furthermore, the development of cyberinfrastructure and cloud-based BIM platforms have added to the complexity of the problem. Thus, understanding the scope and extent of copyright protection and development of new clauses to cover digital-intellectual properties including BIM models can help in avoiding such conflicts in the future. Currently, there is a gap for adequate literature about copyright in construction, namely with BIM-based design, and the purpose of this paper is to review relevant U.S. copyright law. This paper reviews the copyright law of the United States and current standards and legal resources to find and suggest a good legal standard that could help in covering the digital intellectual properties such as BIM models. The contribution of this paper is a review of relevant copyright laws and regulations regarding BIM-based design. Significantly, this paper can help professionals in the AECO attain a better knowledge about copyright laws to avoid potential litigation in the future.
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Published In
Construction Research Congress 2020: Project Management and Controls, Materials, and Contracts
Pages: 1168 - 1176
Editors: David Grau, Ph.D., Arizona State University, Pingbo Tang, Ph.D., Arizona State University, and Mounir El Asmar, Ph.D., Arizona State University
ISBN (Online): 978-0-7844-8288-9
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© 2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Published online: Nov 9, 2020
Published in print: Nov 9, 2020
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