Three Legal Issues that Could Torpedo Your Interior Design Career
By Henry Lien
Interior designers are tasked with juggling multiple flaming chainsaws that have nothing to do with the actual substantive practice of interior design: insurance issues, tax and accounting issues, personnel issues, client emotional management, etc. One of the most critical ones is the law.
Interior designers come into this field because they are artists and want to realize creative visions. However, that doesn’t mean that you don’t need to at least know some of the potential legal trouble spots that are invisible to most people untrained in law.
I used to practice as an attorney and now I teach Interior Design Law I and II in the UCLA Extension ARC+ID Program. Note that nothing in this article constitutes legal advice and is offered for educational purposes only. My classes strive to impart to students a sense of “street smarts” so that they develop an instinct for the types of behaviors that tend to spawn legal problems. Here are a couple of tidbits that might surprise you.
1. Issue One — What happens to your plans if you’re fired mid-job?
Say a client hires you to create plans (aka blueprints) for a remodel of their home. Say you do that and then start work executing the plans. Then, you get in a big, screaming fight with the client and they bounce you off the job. They go and hire your arch-nemesis interior designer to complete the work executing your plan. Your written contract with the client said nothing about your rights to the plan if you are fired from the job before it’s complete. Thus, there is nothing you can do to stop the client from using your arch-nemesis to complete work on the plan you created, right?
Wrong! Plans can qualify for architectural copyright protection. The default rule is that the architectural copyright belongs to you as the person who created that work, even if you leave the job. Unless the contract specifically, affirmatively said that you are waiving that right and granting it to the client and that you are receiving adequate consideration (aka compensation) for giving up the copyright, it stays with you. No one else can use it without your permission, even if the plan was tailored to the client’s property and is useless anywhere else! So lawyer up and haul your client and arch-nemesis into court.
2. Issue Two — If someone steals your original design for a furnishing, can you sue them for copyright?
Let’s move away from hypotheticals and look at an actual case of bad, sad things that happened to an actual designer. There’s a hotel in Las Vegas with an Italian theme, which I will not name. The hotel installed 13,500 sconces in its rooms based on a design created by a designer in San Francisco. The designer never got paid a penny by the hotel for that. The hotel contacted the San Francisco designer to create a proposal based on existing, expensive, minimalist sconces that he had made. The original sconces were too expensive for this job so he found a company in China that could mass produce a more affordable version of his own sconce. He put together a proposal to create 13,500 sconces for the hotel. The proposal included the name and contact information for the company in China.
The hotel thus had all the information they needed — actual high-end versions of the sconces (which they just bought from a showroom in West Hollywood, like any customer could have), and the identity of the company in China that could create affordable copies that met the San Francisco designer’s own standards. Thus, they simply went around the San Francisco designer and hired the Chinese company themselves.
When the San Francisco designer discovered this, he sued the hotel for copyright infringement, among other things. However, he never registered for copyright of the sconce before the legal issue arose. When he filed the lawsuit, he belatedly tried to register the copyright but it was rejected by the Copyright Office. The court affirmed that the copyright was properly rejected because copyright is intended for “works of art”, not for “functional objects”. The Copyright Office and the Court looked at this minimalist sconce design, failed to understand that since the mid-20th century, form and function were ideally merged, and said that this sconce was so plain and simple that it was basically just a functional object and not a work of art and therefore not subject to copyright protection!
3. Issue Three — What if I want to work on a project located out of state?
If an interior design project is located in a state that doesn’t require that interior designers be licensed, anyone can work on it. California is a state that doesn’t have official interior designer licensing (and voluntary Certified Interior Design certification is NOT the same as real licensing).
However, other states do require actual official licensing, just like with architects, doctors, attorneys, etc. You cannot work on a project in those states without being licensed in those states (with various exceptions based on type, scale, and number of projects). If you work on a project in such a state without being licensed there, you could face fines, ethical complaints, and inability to get paid for your work or bring a lawsuit to enforce payment.
Florida is one state that requires official licensing. It is known to be particularly aggressive in prosecuting unlicensed interior designers working on Florida projects. It has brought cases against designers such as Kelly Wearstler and Juan Montoya on this basis.
However, if you have an opportunity to work on a job in a state that requires official licensing but you don’t have a license in that state, you don’t have to turn down the job. Simply “associate” with a licensed interior designer in that state. Those working under the supervision of a licensed interior designer in a jurisdiction with a licensing requirement do not themselves need to be licensed. You’ll probably have to pay the local designer a portion of your fees, but it is better than losing the job, or taking the job by yourself and potentially violating the law, facing fines, and having your contract be unenforceable. Further, the local designer might be a valuable resource for local sourcing and logistical purposes, as well as being knowledgeable about local codes, permits, etc.
These are just three examples of some of the concepts that I cover in my classes. Learning some of these basics can help you develop a “sixth sense” to know what are legal trouble spots, to learn to avoid them, and to know when to seek professional help. There are few things in life more stressful and financially ruinous than a lawsuit. Learning how to avoid them can be invaluable for your career and your own peace of mind. My classes help designers avoid the ugly scenarios that are possible in this profession so you can focus on creating beauty.
