Coffey Burlington LLP - A Miami Florida Law Firm

Appellate court hands Trump win in suit claiming theft of building design
Daily Buisness Review
May 20, 2008

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed a lower court decision finding real estate mogul Donald Trump and his architect did not steal the designs for his Sunny Isles Beach condominium complex from a Czech architect

Paul Oravec in 1995 and 1996 developed a design for a high-rise building featuring alternating concave and convex segments and elevator cores protruding through the building’s roofline.

He shopped the designs around to as many as 120 groups.

Oravec saw a newspaper advertisement in 2003 featuring a photograph of the planned Palace and Trump Royale. Believing the designs resembled his own, Oravec sued claiming copyright infringement.
U.S. District court Judge Patricia A. Seitz found no reasonable jury could find the Trump buildings are substantially similar to Oravec's designs.
The 11th Circuit upheld Seitz’s ruling last week. Writing for a three-judge panel, Judge Charles R. Wilson said there is a difference between ideas and expressions.
While the Trump buildings have alternating segments and elevator towers extending above the roof line, there-are "numerous significant differences in the expression of these elements," Wilson said.
Susana E. Raffanello, an attorney with Coffey Burlington in Miami who represented Trump and the other defendants on appeal, said no copyright protection for architectural works existed prior to 1990. But with the building boom, it has become an increasingly litigious area.
The 11th Circuit "reaffirmed the tenet of copyright law, extending it definitely to architectural works, that nobody can have a copyright to a generalized idea or shape," Raffanello said.