IP Law Daily, COPYRIGHT—S.D. Miss.: Lawsuit over alleged copying of home design in Florida Panhandle can go forward, (Jan 30, 2026)

By Matthew Hersh, J.D.

But a registration oversight will narrow the architectural firm’s infringement claim.

An architectural firm that accused a real estate developer of replicating the exterior façade of one of its custom-built homes could maintain a lawsuit against the developer even though the lawsuit accused the homebuilder of purloining only one visible part of the home and not the entire building, the federal court for the Southern District of Mississippi has held. But the court, in refusing to dismiss the architectural firm’s lawsuit, also made clear that because of a shortcoming in the firm’s registration of its building design, the lawsuit would have to rise or fall on whether the developer copied the design straight from the original building itself, rather than from its underlying technical drawings and plans (A Boheme Design, L.L.C. v. Bruce Kelly Properties Ltd. Liability Co., No. 3:25-cv-00416-TSL-RPM (S.D. Miss. Jan. 28, 2026)).

The lawsuit arose out of a dispute between Florida-based architecture firm A Boheme Design and Mississippi-based homebuilder BK Properties. In the early 2010s, Boheme created a custom design for two homeowners in the Florida Panhandle town of Inlet Beach. In 2024, Boheme came to believe that BK Properties had copied its custom design for the front elevation of a home under construction just one mile away. Boheme sued BK Properties in June of 2025 for infringement of its copyrighted building design.

BK Properties moved to dismiss the claim, leading to this opinion.

Infringement of the work as a whole. The court granted the motion in part and dismissed the motion in part. The court first had to address a threshold issue: did it matter that the developer replicated only the front elevation of the copyrighted design as opposed to the entire design? Under the Copyright Act, a protected “architectural work” is defined as “the design of a building as embodied in any tangible medium of expression, including a building, architectural plans, or drawings.” But that definition goes on to say that “the work” includes “the overall form as well as the arrangement and composition of spaces and elements in the design, but does not include individual standard features.” The developer, seizing on the phrase “the overall form,” argued that copyright protection in the original home extended only to the design of the entire home and not to the front elevation of the building alone. The court disagreed.

The problem with the developer’s argument, the court found, was that it failed to distinguish between the scope of the architectural firm’s copyright and the scope of the alleged infringement of that copyright. The architectural firm’s copyright in the home as an architectural work, the court noted, “does, by definition, include the home’s ‘overall form.’” That is, the court noted, “its copyright protection encompasses the entire design.” But that copyright, the court reasoned, could be infringed “by copying any protectable part of the design”—including, the court emphasized, “only the exterior, or one elevation of the exterior.” Indeed, the court noted, to allow a builder to copy the exterior of a copyrighted home design “would be similar to allowing an author to copy a chapter out of a copyrighted book.” This argument for dismissal would fail.

Substantial similarity. The court also refused to dismiss the claim, at least at the present stage of the proceedings, based on a comparison of the two buildings. The developer argued, on the basis of side-by-side photographs embedded into the complaint, that there were important differences between the two exterior elevations. For example, the developer noted, its own building had distinguishable features such as “wave-like, sweeping parapet walls” and “ornate balconies.” But these arguments were simply premature, the court emphasized. The photographs embedded in the complaint were of small size and relatively poor quality, the court noted, making the differences difficult to discern. Moreover, the court noted, there were “obvious similarities in the overall look and feel of the two homes.” Thus, the court noted, it was “not inclined, especially on a motion to dismiss, to find that as a matter of law, that the homes’ front elevations are not substantially similar.” That argument would have to await a later stage of the case.

Personal copying. Nor did it matter, the court emphasized, that the developer allegedly left the copying of the exterior elevation of the home to its own architectural firm rather than doing the copying itself. Direct copyright infringement requires “volitional conduct,” the court noted, which is “conduct by a person who causes in some meaningful way an infringement.” Relevant precedents taught, the court noted, that this requires that there be “actual infringing conduct with a nexus sufficiently close and causal to the illegal copying that one could conclude that the [defendant] himself trespassed on the exclusive domain of the copyright owner.” Here, the complaint easily passed that threshold. Indeed, the court noted, the complaint alleges that developer expressly instructed its architectural firm to design a house “so that the exterior elevation on the street side would be a copy” of the same elevation of the original home. That sufficiently alleged “volitional conduct that can support a claim for direct liability,” the court reasoned.

Copyright in technical drawings. But while the court refused to dismiss the infringement claim, it did narrow the claim based on the architectural firm’s copyright registration. The architectural firm registered a copyright in the building design as incorporated into the physical structure itself, but it did not register a separate copyright in the technical drawings on which the structure was based. Under Copyright Office regulations, the court noted, where dual copyright claims exist in technical drawings and the architectural work depicted in the drawings, “any claims with respect to the technical drawings and architectural work must be registered separately.” Thus, the court noted, the architect would be limited to proceeding only on claims that the developer copied the design directly as it was as embedded in the house itself. All claims for infringement of the technical plans and drawings, by contrast, would be dismissed.

The case is No. 3:25-cv-00416-TSL-RPM.

Judge: Lee, T.

Attorneys: Jonathan S. Masters (Holcomb Law Group LLC) for A Boheme Design, L.L.C. Hugh A. Warren (Jones Walker, LLP ) for Bruce Kelly Properties Ltd. Liability Co.

Companies: A Boheme Design, L.L.C.; Bruce Kelly Properties Ltd. Liability Co.

Cases: Copyright MississippiNews