IP Law Daily, COPYRIGHT—W.D. Va.: Designers beware: Register your building designs as architectural works, (Jul 16, 2026)

By Matthew Hersh, J.D.

Building designs registered only as pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works protect the drawings themselves—not the construction of the depicted three-dimensional structures.

A designer that claimed that two former clients used its designs in construction projects failed to state a claim for copyright infringement because its copyrights extended only to the designs themselves and not to the construction of the three-dimensional structures depicted in those designs, the District Court for the Western District of Virginia has held. In dismissing the copyright claims, the court nonetheless left intact claims for defamation and other claims under state law (Samphel v. Lily Qiaorong Wu, No. 7:25-cv-00710-EKD-CKM (W.D. Va. Jul. 15, 2026)).

The lawsuit was brought by a husband-and-wife team, Tenzin Samphel and Xiaoyu Gu, who work in the fields of visual and interior design, architecture, engineering, and construction. Through companies they operate, the two designers were hired to provide design and construction services for a bubble tea shop and a restaurant in Blacksburg, Virginia. After approximately 80% of the required work under both contracts had been completed, including architectural, interior, electrical, plumbing, and construction services, the designers alleged, the owners of the two businesses terminated the contracts without justification and hired other contractors to complete the projects. Worse, the designers alleged, the business owners publicly accused them of operating a scam business, fabricating credentials, stealing designs, defrauding clients, and engaging in other widespread misconduct.

The husband-and-wife team of designers sued the business owners and their companies for defamation, common law conspiracy, and statutory business conspiracy under Virginia law. They also sued for copyright infringement, alleging that the business owners and their companies, in completing the work the designers started, used their designs without authorization to construct and operate the completed establishments with interiors that were "nearly identical or substantially similar" to those designs.

The two businesses moved to dismiss the copyright infringement claims, leading to this opinion.

Copyright infringement. The court dismissed the copyright infringement claims. The parties did not dispute that the husband-and-wife team of designers, through one of their companies, owned registered copyrights in the drawings for the two commercial establishments. But the dispute in the case, the court observed, centered on the scope of the protection those copyrights provided. Because those copyrights did not extend to the construction or use of the physical interiors alleged to infringe the drawings, the court found, the claims had to be dismissed.

The problem for the two designers, the court found, was that they registered their architectural plans only as pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works rather than as architectural works. Under the Copyright Act, the court noted, the holder of a copyright in an architectural plan has two forms of protection, one under the provision for an “architectural work” under 17 U.S.C. § 102(a)(8), and another under the provision for a “pictorial, graphical, or sculptural work” under 17 U.S.C. § 102(a)(5). If the designers had registered their plans as architectural works, the court emphasized, they would have had protection for “the overall form as well as the arrangement and composition of spaces and elements in [their] design.” But by registering them only as pictorial, graphical, or sculptural works, the court emphasized, they obtained protection only in “the drawings themselves and not the construction of the structure depicted in those drawings.”

That distinction was fatal to the complaint, the court found. The designers alleged that the business owners and their companies used their designs to construct and operate the completed establishments with substantially similar interiors, but “those allegations concern the implementation of the designs in physical spaces—not the unauthorized copying of the copyrighted drawings themselves.” Because their registrations as “pictorial, graphical, or sculptural works” protect only the drawings, and not the resulting interior spaces, the court concluded, “the conduct alleged falls outside the scope of the copyright protection afforded by those registrations.”

The Case is No. 7:25-cv-00710-EKD-CKM.

Judge: Dillon, E.

Attorneys: Christopher Duffy Davis (Davis, Burch & Abrams) for Tenzin Samphel. Elizabeth E. S. Skilling (Corrigan & Wellman PC) for Lily Qiaorong Wu.

Cases: Copyright VirginiaNews GCNNews