On Monday, August 15, 2005, at 05:25 PM, Bob Blakely wrote:
Very, very few buildings are under copyright here in the US. Only a few and they use their edifice as their LOGO. If you use a photo of their edifice for commercial use, it implies their endorsement. If you just sell a photo of their edifice for the photo's artistic value, they are probably without complaint.
You can't copyright a building. You can copyright the architectural drawings for the building, and you might even be able to patent some design elements if they are functional. What has been done to a few buildings in the USA is that they have been registered as trademarks. You can not copy a trademark for commercial use without the permission of the trademark owner (unless you're Andy Warhol and it becomes fine art).
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is an example of this. If you shoot a photo in which the Hall of Fame fills the frame or nearly does and publish it as a poster, they'll sue you. If you shoot the whole skyline that just happens to include the Hall of Fame, there is nothing they can do.
People continually confuse copyright, trademark, and patent. Bob Shell
