Hunn v. Dan Wilson Homes, Inc.
Where an architectural draftsman left
his design firm mid-project and later used partial plans drawn
during his employment to complete the project, the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the ruling that the
draftsman and his client had an implied license to use the draft
plans and thus did not infringe the firm's copyrights. Hunn
v. Dan Wilson Homes, Inc., Case Nos. 13-11297, 14-10365 (5th
Cir., June 15, 2015) (Elrod, J.).
Dan Wilson Homes (Wilson), a home construction company, hired
Hunn Designs (Hunn) to complete architectural plans for four custom
homes. Ben Lack, a draftsman employed at Hunn, created partial
plans and delivered paper copies to Wilson and the homeowners at
several weekly meetings. Before Lack had completed the project, he
disclosed to Hunn that he wished to resign, which led to his
termination. Hunn asked that Lack return the physical files from
the Wilson project but did not ask for the AutoCAD
