## Facts

- Intervest Construction, Inc., a Florida homebuilder, owned the copyright in a residential floor plan for a four-bedroom home called “The Westminster,” created for Intervest as a work made for hire (1992).
- Canterbury Estate Homes, Inc., another Florida homebuilder, created a different four-bedroom floor plan called “The Kensington” (2002).
- Both plans included many standard residential components (e.g., master suite, additional bedrooms, two-car garage, living and dining rooms, family room, kitchen, bathrooms, foyer, nook, porch/patio) and common fixtures and features (doors, windows, walls, closets, hallways, and typical kitchen, bathroom, and utility fixtures).
- Intervest alleged Canterbury copied protectable expression from “The Westminster,” asserting substantial similarity between the two plans.
- The district court filtered out unprotectable standard elements and compared the protectable “selection, coordination, and arrangement” of the remaining elements, emphasizing differences in room sizes, locations, and circulation patterns.
- The district court granted summary judgment for Canterbury, concluding no reasonable fact-finder could find substantial similarity in protectable expression.
- Intervest appealed, arguing the court misapplied the substantial similarity test and misread Eleventh Circuit precedent.

## Issues

1. Whether, after excluding unprotectable standard architectural elements, a reasonable jury could find substantial similarity between the protectable selection, coordination, and arrangement of the two floor plans.
2. Whether summary judgment was proper on the substantial-similarity question for a floor plan largely comprised of standard residential components.

## Decision

- The Eleventh Circuit affirmed summary judgment for Canterbury.
- The court held that residential floor plans composed largely of standard features receive thin copyright protection, limited to the author’s particular selection, coordination, and arrangement of those features.
- After filtering out unprotectable elements, the plans’ protectable arrangements were materially different; thus, no reasonable jury could find substantial similarity at the level of protectable expression.
- The court rejected the argument that focusing on dissimilarities misapplied precedent; in a compilation-type architectural case, attention to differences is necessary to separate protectable arrangement from unprotectable similarities.

## Legal Principles

- Architectural works that primarily compile common rooms and functional features are protected chiefly for the author’s selection, coordination, and arrangement of those elements, not for the elements themselves.
- Where protectable expression is thin, infringement requires substantial similarity in the protected arrangement, not merely shared functional components typical of the genre.
- Courts may filter out unprotectable elements before comparing works to assess substantial similarity in protectable expression.
- Summary judgment is appropriate when, after filtering, the alleged infringing work is not substantially similar in protectable arrangement such that no reasonable fact-finder could conclude otherwise.

## Conclusion

Because the only protectable expression in the plaintiff’s residential floor plan lay in a thinly protected arrangement of standard features, and the defendant’s plan differed materially in that arrangement once unprotectable elements were excluded, the Eleventh Circuit held that substantial similarity could not be found as a matter of law and affirmed summary judgment for the defendant.


Intervest Construction, Inc. v. Canterbury Estate Homes, Inc., 554 F.3d 914 (11th Cir. 2008)