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,
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.
