The Most Expensive Form Of Flattery

Architectural ideas are not protected by copyright law. The same goes for the individual design elements, like doors and windows, that are needed to make a building work. Standard layouts are not covered either, but home designs, in general, are. They are copyrightable in any tangible form including plans and actual buildings. Since December 1, 1990, section 102 of the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. has granted protection to the overall form and composition of such “architectural works”.

While bridges, boats, and trailers are not protected as “architectural works”, the architectural plans and technical drawings used to depict them are protected as, “pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works”. The “sculptural” part, really refers not to the plans so much, but to any part of the RV or bridge that can be called artful rather than utilitarian. In other words, something is protected as “sculptural” only to the extent that its artful qualities exist independent of its utility. [Read more]

VIVA LA TINY REVOLUTION

All of our midsize houses (250s.f.- 800s.f.) should meet all IBC size restrictions, and the little ones should get around such building codes because they are not buildings; they are vehicles.

Laws dictating how small our homes can be were introduced back in the 70s and 80s by lobbyists from the housing industry. It had become clear that, as the number of houses being sold by the industry leveled off, fiscal growth would remain possible only so long as the size of their product was increased. Size restrictions were thus written into building code at the federal level and adopted by municipalities throughout the US. Banks quickly followed suit by providing loans only for houses large enough to warrant the cost of the land on which they would sit. Local zoning, in turn, ensured exorbitant land costs by generally demanding that each little house sit on a parcel no smaller than one required for a large structure. [Read more]

Trade Plans for Truck Rental?

Jay is looking for an 8-cylinder truck to tow his house across the American West Coast for his Border-to-Border Tour. If you have a truck you’re willing to lend [Read more]

Closed for vacation

All order of books and plans will continue to ship as normal without interruption.

We will be closed from Friday June 13, 2008 until Wednesday July 2, 2008. [Read more]

Our New Website

It’s been almost 1 year in the making, and now that it’s posted on the net we couldn’t be more pleased. Last year, when I first brought up the idea of a new website I could see Jay turn red right before my eyes. Our old site was designed over the course of 5 years by 4 different programmers and in a word was “clunky”. After a little convincing, Jay was on board. Countless hours and thousands of dollars later, our new site is born.

Designed in Web 2.0, our new site is much more flexible and scalable. We receive so many emails full of great questions and comments that we wanted to incorportate into our site. Now, we can do that; and we can do it easily!

Thank you for your support over the years. And keep checking back. We’ll be adding to our site on a regular basis.