What is the situation with regards to copyright where one designer has designed a building and drawn up the plans, but then a different designer is appointed to do further work on the design and plans?
The scenario is that a designer was engaged to design alterations to a building and prepare plans for the purpose of getting planning appoval, and building control approval. The initial planning approval element was obtained, and the designer has retained full copyright for the work.
The client now wants a different person to prepare constuction plans and submit these for buildng control approval (this entails adding more detail to the outline design, but not changing it). This second designer must use the original designers 'design' and plans to do this.
It seems that this can not be done unless the copyright owner agrees, so it would seem he is in a strong position to claim 'ransom' release fees.
Who is responsible for the payment of such fees - the client or the new designer?
Or is there some implied term that the client can use the plans as he sees fit?
Would it make a difference if the original designer was expecting to do the rest of the work, and proceeded on this basis, but then the client passed this work to someone else instead?
There was no formal contract in place between client and designer
dg