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108 Copyright Your
Architectural Works Under the 1990 Protection Act.
April 13, 2005 / After a three-week trial in Los
Angeles, a six-person jury ruled last week in Hablinski's
favor and awarded him nearly $6 million. The jury found that
the defendants conspired with a former Hablinski employee to
copy plans for the Sands house and use them to build the
Beverly Hills home.
• • The case of the copycat house has
played out against the backdrop of the heated, extravagant
world of Westside real estate, where many homeowners pay
stratospheric prices to hire the architect of the moment.
(Hablinski has created custom designs for Arnold
Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver, Warren Beatty and Annette
Bening, as well as Jennifer Lopez and Jim
Carrey.)
• • The suit sought to test the limits of
the 1990 Architectural Works Copyright Protection Act.
Designed to help bring the United States into compliance
with the Bern Convention, an international copyright
agreement, the law extended copyright protection to
buildings.
• • A fair number of lawsuits alleging
architectural copyright infringement have been filed
involving commercial projects.
• • Such cases on the residential side,
against homeowners, have been far more rare. Peter J. Bezek,
Hablinski's attorney, said this was the only case he knew in
which a homeowner was found to have infringed on the works
of an architect.
• • Bezek said the verdict sets an
important precedent for architects who devise original
concepts for clients because it "protects that architect all
the way through to the end user. If you build from an
infringed set of plans and you have the … ability to
control the architect and you had a financial interest in
the process, you're liable whether you knew or didn't know
[that the plans were
stolen]."
• • Hablinski said he was elated by the
outcome. "We live in a highly technological age," he said.
"Two or three years of work can be pirated at the stroke of
a key."
• • Hablinski said he was stunned when the
two architects who discovered the "copycat house," Dave
Hogan and Richard Giesbret, told him about their trip to
Beverly Hills.
• • "We were extremely surprised and
extremely disappointed and, frankly, quite demoralized that
this could have happened to us," he
said.
• • After happening upon the Beverly Hills
house two years ago, Hogan and Giesbret looked at floor
plans that a worker had laid out. The size of the sheets
appeared to be identical to the plans for the Sands
residence. Hogan also noticed that a logo and website for
MSH Design appeared in the same place where the William
Hablinski Architecture logo was positioned on the original
Hablinski drawings. MSH Design is the firm of Mehran
Shahverdi, who once worked for
Hablinski.
• • Two days later, Giesbret visited the
Beverly Hills building department to review plans for the
Marilyn Drive mansion.
• • One page contained the code name for
the Sands residence, Unity Family Trust. The owner-builder
building permit listed Parviz Elihu as the applicant and
Amir Construction, owned by Parviz and his brothers, as the
general contractor.
• • Amir, Hablinski learned, had formerly
employed Shahverdi. Joseph Elihu was listed as the house's
owner.
• • According to Hablinski's complaint,
Joseph Elihu was president of EuroConcepts, another
Elihu-owned company, which won the bid to supply some
kitchen and bathroom fixtures for the Sands house. Both
companies were named in the suit.
• • In addition to Parviz (known as Perry)
and Joseph, the suit named their brothers Daniel and Albert.
It also named Joseph's wife, Hayedeh Elihu, who now occupies
the Marilyn Drive house with him.
• • In a telephone interview Tuesday, Sands
recalled how he testified in court that he once visited the
EuroConcepts showroom in the Pacific Design Center. One of
the Elihus came out to greet him and said: "Great
house."
• • Bezek said the plaintiffs were able to
find evidence by sifting through Shahverdi's seemingly
burned-out computer.
• • A specialist in Texas was able to
salvage a portion of the burned hard drives, Bezek said. On
them Hablinski's legal team found incriminating e-mails and
"the DNA that came from Hablinski's CAD (computer-aided
design) drawings that were traced all the way through to the
copycat house drawings."
• • The jury ultimately found that the
"overall composition" of the two houses -- including the
placement and size of chimneys, balconies, doors, windows
and a series of rear archways -- was almost
identical.
• • The verdict came to about $5.9 million.
Under a simple mathematical formula that applied in this
case, Hablinski has the right to take the profit from the
house that was built from the pilfered
plans.
• • The Beverly Hills house was determined
to have a fair market value of $14 million. Once the value
of the land, the cost of construction and other costs were
subtracted, the "profit" on the house was determined to be
about $5 million.
• • Hablinski also was eligible to receive
$380,000 as the value of his plans and $500,000 for damage
to his reputation.
• • Bezek's advice to individuals seeking
to build a custom home: "Make sure you're dealing with
someone reputable and who is designing a house just for
you."
• • An attorney for the Elihus said the
defendants planned to appeal but also were discussing a
settlement with Hablinski.
• • "My clients are disappointed with the
jury verdict," said Jim Hicks, the
attorney.
• • "They believe they will prevail on
appeal. In the meantime, we're trying to resolve this with
plaintiffs."
• • He declined to comment further, saying
he felt constrained by the settlement
talks.
• • About a year ago, Sands and his family
happily settled into their Bel-Air home on Moraga
Drive.
• • Still smarting from the copycat
experience, Sands said Tuesday that he was contemplating a
suit of his own. For his part, Hablinski said he might
consider sharing the proceeds of the case with
Sands.
• • "That remains to be seen," he said.
"We'd have to see what all the legal particulars are."
///
ByLines:
Editors Note
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