Cala Homes (South) Ltd & Ors v Alfred McAlpine Homes East Ltd, Court of Appeal - Chancery Division, July 06, 1995, [1995] EWHC 7 (Ch)
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Cala Homes (South) Ltd & Ors v Alfred McAlpine Homes East Ltd, Court of Appeal - Chancery Division, July 06, 1995, [1995] EWHC 7 (Ch)
CH 1993 C NO. 5508Neutral Citation Number: [1995] EWHC 7 (Ch)IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICECHANCERY DIVISIONRoyal Courts of JusticeStrand, London, WC2A 2LLDate: 6 July 1995Before: THE HON. MR. JUSTICE LADDIE- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -B E T W E E N (1) CALA HOMES (SOUTH) LTD (2) CALA HOMES (SOUTHERN) LTD (3) CALA PLC (4) CALA MANAGEMENT LTD (5) ROGER DATE Plaintiffs - and -ALFRED McALPINE HOMES EAST LTD Defendant- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Mr. Howe instructed by Frere Cholmeley Bischoff for the PlaintiffsMr. G. Hobbs QC and Miss D. McFarland instructed by Edward Lewis for the DefendantHearing dates: 13 - 26 June, 1995- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - JUDGMENTMr. JUSTICE LADDIE:IntroductionThis is an action for copyright infringement and inducement of breach of contract. There are five plaintiffs. The first four are companies engaged in the business of designing and building houses. The third plaintiff, Cala Plc, is the parent company. Nothing turns on the separate identities of these companies for the purpose of this judgment. They will be referred to as Cala. The corporate plaintiffs are part of a group of associated companies which are referred to in this judgment as the Cala group. The fifth plaintiff, Roger Gareth Date, has been employed by Cala for about 12 years. He is currently Cala’s Design Director. The plaintiffs claim to own the copyright in a number of drawings for houses which Cala has erected on various sites round the United Kingdom. Once again, for the purpose of this judgment, if relevant copyright is owned by one or more of the five plaintiffs, no issue arises at this stage as to which one that is. The defendant, Alfred McAlpine Homes East Limited, is a company engaged in the same line of business as the corporate plaintiffs. Its managing director is Mr. Stephen James Rosier.Background to the disputeIn the late 1970’s and early 1980’s the Cala Group consisted of a number of independent companies, each operating in a particular area of the United Kingdom. Each of them put up houses on estates to designs which they thought were satisfactory. The result was that throughout the Group many different styles of house were being built. The designs which the management team running the Cala company in Scotland thought suitable for its area might well be very different to those considered suitable in, say, the West of England. A number of the designs in use in the mid-1980’s were produced by Mr. Date who, in the early days of his employment by Cala, spent some 85% of his time designing and drawing houses. Those drawings were not just of the elevations of the houses but also of the floor plans. In about 1987 it was decided that Cala needed to rationalise the activities of the regional companies by developing a standard range of house designs suitable for use in all regions. This would have the effect not only of pooling the design expertise of all the companies but also, eventually, reducing the duplication inherent in a system where each member of the group designed its own houses. The new range of houses was known within Cala as the New Standard House Range. Mr. Date played a large part in conceiving and developing the designs in the range together with Mr. John Curtis, the Design Director of another company in the Cala group in Scotland. One of the directors of Cala also intimately involved in the creation of the New Standard House Range was ...See the full content of this document
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