All home plans sold on this site are copyrighted intellectual property belonging to their respective owners, protected under the Federal Copyright Act, Title XVII of the U.S. code and Chapter 37 of the Code of Federal Regulations.
It is illegal in any shape or form to copy, modify, change, redraw, or take any action outside the scope of the rights purchased for those specific plans.
How we feel about copyrights
Copyrights is a hard thing to deal with, especially when it comes to digital products and offering something as widely available as the entire internet. Yes, we have users that come to this platform from many different countries, and it can be hard to ensure that everyone has good intentions.
What is important to realize is that the house plans that are being offered here aren’t just created by some super computer that can spit out 1000s of plans every single hour. No, there are human individuals that have gone through many years of education and training in order to create the products, so whenever someone decides to maliciously share copyrighted material, it hurts the creator of those plans in many ways, including financially.
How would you feel if your work was being shared in a way that you did not intend for it to be shared?
What actions we take
Be prepared to know that we will take necessary legal action against sites and individuals that wrongfully download, reproduce, share or in any other form infringe on the copyrights of the architects that we work with on this platform. Our aim is not simply to increase transparency in the market, but also create better conditions for both home builders and architects, and sometimes that unfortunately means to do the unpopular thing and take legal action to remedy a situation.
What can you do and how can you help us out?
Let’s say you find one of the plans we have available in a category like this one, and you know that we are working with the architect that holds the copyright to that specific house plan. If that is the case, we really appreciate when our users contact us letting us know about this possible copyright infringement so we can take the necessary action to remedy the situation. While we wish we could scour the entire internet, it simply isn’t possible to do so, and we often rely on users telling us about these instances before we’re able to act on them.
How do we actively work against copyright infringements?
We can’t reasonably find everything ourselves, but we not only work with a company that helps us in scouring the internet for infringements, we also have various alerts set up to help ensure compliance.
These alerts will let us know every time new results pop up in the search engines that would lead us to believe the plans on this page have been made illegally available somewhere else.
We are able to see if someone uses any combination of our name “PassionPlans”, “Passion Plans” in combination with words that people would typically include when they illegally share some of our products.
We also partner with a company that helps ensure the IP of companies online, that have their individual algorithms that help us find results that we may not be able to find ourselves.
It is also illegal to download the house plans from Passion Plans in any other way than buying them straight from our website.
It is not just illegal to be selling or making the house plans available on other websites, it is also illegal to be downloading house plans made available through Passion Plans on other websites without securing the necessary licenses. While licenses will originally belong to the license holder, who is usually the architect, if you find the house plans available to download for free somewhere else, they have likely not been legally made available by either the architect nor Passion Plans. When in doubt, we do encourage you to either reach out to us or the architect directly to ask them whether the plans you found are legal or not.
If you find the option to download these products somewhere for free, we strongly encourage you against it, as we take all options available within the law to pursue legal action against anyone found to breach the copyright laws on the plans that we license, and that also means that we go after people illegally downloading them. While there may be the perception that it is only illegal to upload them, you should know that it isn’t the case.
If you have previously illegally downloaded the plans, we encourage you to reach out to our team to hear what your options are, as most of our architects simply want to get fair compensation for the work that they put in, why we often find that the best course of action is for you to get the license. If we find out that you downloaded the plans illegally without you having come to us and admitted it, we are more likely to take action than to simply allow you to buy the licenses.
We understand that it may seem like a harsh measure, but we are trying to protect the interests of everyone involved in the production of these products.
What sort of copyrights are on the plans you receive, and how can I use them?
Various plans have various different rights, and if you only purchase house plans that allow you to build one house with those said plans, it’s important to stick to them. Before you purchase plans, make sure you purchase the option that best matches the intentions you have for those specific plans.
When you buy house plans, it will be clearly marked on every single option what you are allowed to do with them. We also encourage you to read through our terms of conditions where you will get a much better understanding of what you are allowed to do.
If you have any questions that you would like to have answered, we are always willing to help you get those answered, whether they are questions related to specific house plans or copyrights. We will also always be available to answer questions related to whether it is possible for you to make changes to house plans, and if you wish to have alterations made, we encourage you to reach out to our team to find out how much it will cost you if we do it for you.
In a lot of cases we will actually have the architects that originally made the house plans be the person who is making the alterations to them that you are requesting.
FAQ
While we understand the concern of copyrights that is very obvious since you will be buying a copyrighted product, we also find that our users like to be informed about the questions that we have answered in our FAQ section where you can better help understand who we are and where we come from. That page also contains a lot more information about potentially altering house plans, and what to do if you are an architect who wants to start working with us.
About us
This dedicated page to copyrights both serve an important function to architects and the users of our platforms. We want to help architects understand our stance on the issue, and what we will do to address potential issues that may arise. It is as important that we trust you as it is that you trust us when we start a partnership. We want to make sure you realize the lengths that we will go through in order to protect the things that you have created as a skilled architect.
For users we want to help clarify why we have the stance on the matter that we do, You purchasing from us is what will allow us to help grow this community.
How we monitor the internet
Although it may be impossible for us to monitor the entire internet and ensure that there are never any copyright issues, we do take serious action when we websites that post copyrighted material on them, as those actions are directly financially damaging the architects that we work with, and because we want to keep their interests at heart. We are very familiar with the situation of sending DMCA requests to websites that may be posting content that they are not allowed to. If we come across websites that repeatedly post copyrighted material on them, we are very likely to take legal action to not just make sure that the content is taken down, but that financial compensation is received to the fullest extent of the law so that we can adequately compensate our very talented architects. In those instances, we will be as aggressive as permitted by the law in the compensation that we seek, especially when it is a website that hasn’t taken adequate actions in order to ensure the interests of our architects.
We are notified every single time our website is mentioned on the internet, and we have various alarms set up for names of the different products that we offer here in order to ensure that we can take swift action, and that our products won’t be illegally accessible for extensive periods of time online. If you or a website that you either own or work for receives a DMCA request, we kindly ask that you take it seriously and make sure to take down the relevant content as fast as possible so as to be compliant with the request. We also ask that you stay honest with us and that you take future actions to make sure that you won’t be violating our copyrights in the future. This is especially relevant when you may be running a website where users are posting a lot of the content that goes live. If you find out that other users may have posted things on your website that violates our copyright agreements, we encourage you to reach out to us as quickly as possible to be honest about the situation, and tell us which actions you have taken to address the situation. In addition, please include which actions you have taken to make sure that these incidents don’t repeat themselves in the future.
How do I make sure users don’t post copyrighted material on a website I own?
If you own a website that hosts a part of a website where users can submit content on their own, and that content isn’t heavily moderated, there is a chance that these users may be sharing content that they in fact do not own the copyrights for. While we do encourage moderating content published on a website, we also realize that it may not be possible to moderate all the content that is posted without having to hire additional employees, which may simply not be feasible. When that has been said, there are ways that you can help better ensure that your website doesn’t accidentally end up hosting or linking to illegal content.
Among other things, what we encourage you to do is to research software specific ways that helps flag potentially illegal content on your website. If your website is hosting a forum on it, there are various plugins that can often be installed that will notify you if certain words are mentioned in the posts posted by different users. This type of software is usually specific to the specific software that you are using, why there may be more options available for some of the more popular forum platforms. Besides that, we also encourage you to be especially careful with new users on your forum. It is very easy to have a forum degrade over time if there is no moderation going on, and the easiest way to assure there are no copyright issues is by establishing the processes to avoid it in the first place. Copyrighted material is often more likely to be posted by new users that aren’t afraid to have their accounts banned. If it is made clear that posting copyrighted material will result in an immediate ban, it usually discourages illegal behavior.
Is copyrighted content really such a big issue?
There are different opinions in society as to whether copyrighted content is really an issue or not, and our definite stance is that it is. While some people may not believe that non-physical products should be able to have the same legal protection as physical products should have, we fully understand that we may have very different opinions on the topic.
We hope that you will one day come to understand our stance on the topic, as we are obviously in a situation where we are only dealing with digital products such as mansion and 2-story house plans.
The work that goes into designing these products is very extensive and is time that architects aren’t focused on working on other projects. Trust us when we say that we would absolutely love to be able to hand everything away for free that we offer here at PassionPlans, but we also have an obligation to be a platform that can provide a living for the architects that rely on us. They rely on our work to uphold copyright content laws to ensure that homes aren’t being built illegally.
They require us to uphold copyright laws so that they can be able to practice the profession they love, and keep designing the architectural wonders that you will see as you’re’ traveling the country.
If you take pride in the work that you do, you may also have a very hard time simply seeing others copy it without giving you the credit for it, and without compensating you for the fact that you initially made it possible.
We understand that there may very well be differing opinions on the topic as to whether it is right to copyright digital products. We have spent a long time explaining our position on the topic, and hope you have a desire to respect the hard work that we are doing. With all of that being said, can we count on you? Can we count on you to respect the hard work that we do and not plagiarize it? Can we count on you to help us out if you discover that our work has been stolen and published on other websites?
A final note
While we understand that the message above may not seem like a message of joy, we really want you to understand where we are coming from. The home building journey should be one of joy, and it undoubtedly starts with you being able to find the right design that matches the dreams and desires that you have.
While we want to be part of the journey, we also have to take necessary protective measures to ensure that our work isn’t taken for granted.
We absolutely love every single time a buyer sends us an email with the photos of their newly built home, after telling us that our platform was the one that they ended up buying the house plans through. Nothing makes us happier than knowing you and your family built exactly the home of your dreams.
With this page, though, we hope you understand that we have interest too that we need to take serious. We also have a dedicated about us page where you can learn more about us and our values that we encourage both users and architects to read through.
We still hope that you may be considering either buying your house plans through us, or if you are an architect, getting in contact with us to see if there is a basis for working together and have you license our plans to us.
Are you ready to get started building your new home?
We fully understand that you may have just spent a significant amount of time better understanding how we handle copyright issues, and we also understand that it may not be the exciting reading there is out there. We truthfully wish that we didn’t have to include such information, but the reality when dealing with digital products is that there are a lot of them that end up getting copied and shared illegally online, making it an issue that we have to take a firm stance on.
When that’s been said, starting your journey of building your new home is an exciting one. It is a journey that will bring you a lot of unknown but it is also a journey that you will one day look back at and hopefully be happy that you decided to undertake. As you’ll be living at your new dream home, it will all be worth it. Your family will have a new place to live and the possible frustrations that you may have had with the previous home that you lived in are now a thing of the past. No longer do you have to endure the lack of space that you were experiencing where you previously lived. You decided to upgrade your previous 2 bedroom place to a more spacious 4 bedroom option that wasn’t just able to better accommodate your family’s growing needs as you added a family, but it also allowed for you to more easily be able to host those guests at your home that you had previously otherwise always had to put in a nearby hotel whenever they would come into town. It could also mean that you would finally be able to have that private office that you had always wanted. All simply because you managed to find your way to our platform, at which point you decided to take a look at the many different house plans that we offer on here. It was a step that you may have ended up taking a lot too late.
Perhaps you moved from a house that you were previously renting into that new home that you had always wanted. Hopefully by the end of your journey, you will end up looking back at all the memories you made throughout the home building process. The many things that went well, as well as the things that could have gone better. These are hopefully the thoughts you’ll be having in the future when you look back at the process that you and your family decided to undertake because you finally ended up convincing yourself that you weren’t happy with the place that you’re currently living in. Hopefully when you end up on the other side of the journey, you’ll be able to look back at the journey and realize the many great things that you were able to continue. Hopefully it will be a sense of pride over what you have been able to achieve rather than a focus on what ended up being stressful throughout the process.
We’re not claiming that this is a journey that won’t be stressful. It definitely will be. You’re not simply fixing up your old car in the garage. You may in fact not even currently have a garage in the place that you live in, and that is one of the big reasons why you are currently looking at building a house that does have one. However, this is a journey where you will learn how to work with contractors. You may be the person who additionally has to apply for building permits, or it may be the contractor who ends up doing that part of the process for you, as they may offer to help you out with that part as well. After all, they are more so used to dealing with the local building department and they will be better able to assist you in making sure that you are submitting all the necessary documents to get the plans for your dream home approved. You may find out that a certain part of the process that you were expecting to take 2 weeks in fact ended up taking 2 months instead, thereby adding to your frustrations over having everything take a lot longer than you anticipated. You may end up finding out that you should in fact have put more consideration into choosing the contractor that you work with. You may end up having to change your contractor midway through the project as you realize that the many things that they were promising you were never realistic. Perhaps you find that there were certain parts of the new home that were never done to the standard that you were expecting and you end up having to replace the floor before you even move into the home. You want your new home to be up to the standard that you set out to get, and when things aren’t done right, sometimes they need to be redone. We fully understand that.
These are all parts of the usual frustrations associated with building a home, and it’s only natural for some things to go wrong when you are undertaking such a big project. Many projects will face difficulties through the process, and home building is not exempt from this. It can especially be the case if it’s your first time building a home, or if you end up choosing the wrong contractor, why it’s so imperative that you find the right company to work with.
The same way that you will get a feeling of accomplishment when you buy a house, as will you when you build one. It will not just be a feeling of accomplishment, but one that far outweighs the feeling you would have if you simply bought a home. When you buy a home, you’re left with the fact that you will have to accept certain limitations with the house that you’re buying. There may be smaller flaws with the house that you found as you were looking at the various options, and you already knew then that you would likely end up having to make the changes as you move into it. With the home that you’re building, you can rather get those things addressed before you even start the building process so that you are able to move into the home that you always wanted.
However, before you get started, it’s important that you know what you’re getting yourself into. It will vastly help you avoid a lot of the mistakes usually associated with building a home. That means you will have to do the necessary leg work at each step of the way, thereby minimizing the risk of you throwing massive amounts of time and money out the window. By researching all parts of the project, you’re making sure that you are not finding yourself wanting to rip out the floor midway through the project because you chose a material that you don’t like.
It’s additionally important that you consider all your family’s current needs when it comes to the design of a prospective house, as well as your potential future needs. You should always keep in the back of your mind through this whole process that you’re not just building something that needs to satisfy the needs that you have now, but you should in fact be building something you can see yourself living in for a long time. While it may not be the home that you plan to retire in, we do expect that you’ll be staying in the house for years to come, as it’s a massive undertaking you’re now starting.
You may be left with a feeling that it is a bit frightening to start the process, and we fully understand it. It would be weird if you weren’t slightly frightened by the idea of undertaking such a massive project. In fact, it may be a type of project that you have never undertaken before. But it’s also a feeling of excitement. Having read this far on the page, you’re obviously somewhat committed to the idea of getting started, giving your family the dream home you’ve always wanted.
Along the journey of choosing the right house design, we’ll be there to help you. We don’t believe in pushy sales tactics, and we do believe in helpful behavior being rewarded. When you start browsing our platform, we hope you’ll get the feeling that it’s truthfully our dream to make your dream come true, and help you with some of the steps that you might not be familiar with.
Let us help you get started on your journey to move into your dream home.
Since you have managed to make it this far on the page, we believe you’re at least somewhat excited about getting started on your journey. You’ve read a lot of the information about our company and where we come from, so you have hopefully gotten a better understanding about who we are and what it is we’re trying to achieve. We are a company that is hoping to change the way that the industry works, and ultimately help homeowners make more educated decisions in the home building process. We are not a company that will try and sell you a product at all cost, and if you do end up finding a house design on a different platform that better fits your needs, we will always encourage you buying from that platform instead. We understand that in order to gain your trust, it’s important for us to show that we can in fact be trusted.
Hopefully our level of commitment towards wanting to help you get the home that you always wanted is obvious. We have not just made a platform where it’s easy for owners to start their building process, but we have worked with many different architects to make your dreams come true. Besides that, we have outlined various information on our website that we find could be useful for you in the process that you’re embarking on. If you haven’t done so yet, we encourage you to check out our various other pages including the one on our privacy policy that elaborates how we use the various data that we collect. We additionally encourage you to read our return policy page as well as our page that talks about the terms and conditions of this website. Our FAQ page also includes a range of questions that you may be asking yourself in the process of getting started with building your own home. On that page we cover various topics talking about building codes and other aspects. If you have any questions, it may very well be that it has already been answered there. If it hasn’t already been answered there, we encourage you to ask the question and allow us to try and answer the question to the best of our abilities.
Are you a contractor who is ready to start working with us?
In order to be able to sell the house plans through our platform that we are offering, we obviously need for them to come from somewhere. While we do produce some of them inhouse, we also work with external architects that are capable of making these sorts of products for the homeowners and professionals who visit our platform.
Are you one of these skilled professionals who make such products for homeowners? If that’s the case, we really want to get in contact with you and see the work that you have previously done. While we do take a commission from the sales that happen through our platform, we have come to find that the terms that we offer are more favorable for the architects than the terms of some of the other websites on the internet.
While we want to work with architects, we also want to make sure that a potential partnership is a fruitful one where both parts are able to get from the partnership what they hope for. We do not just work with any architect that reaches out to us as we are in the business of being able to stand behind the work that is presented on the website. While there are many skilled architects out there, we only wish to work with ones that we truly feel are a great fit for what it is that we’re trying to accomplish. The same way, we would not want to force a partnership on anyone that doesn’t feel they stand to gain from the exposure that we are able to offer on the platform. While our platform is a growing one, we also know that there are some architects that may rather want to just display their house plans on their own websites.
If you think that there may be a basis for us working together, we’d love if you reach out to our support team and someone will get on a call with you to try and see if you may be a good fit for the platform with the vision that we have for it, and whether you feel that offering your designs on here may be a good decision for you.
