- March 28, 2024
Loading
Two area homebuilders recently battled in state and federal court over an unusual allegation. One builder, Manatee County-based Medallion Home, accused the other builder, Tivoli Homes of Sarasota, of stealing its copyright protected architectural drawings of a new house.
Tivoli Homes and a co-defendant, Sarasota-based Start to Finish Drafting, won the lawsuit and an appeal in federal court, in a case initially filed in 2013. “The victories, both at the trial court and appellate levels, represent full vindication for our clients,” says Christopher Staine, an attorney with the Sarasota office of Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick.
Copyright infringement allegations are fairly ordinary in any industry, even homebuilding, but typically only get to trial when the allegations are particularly egregious. What made this case standout is the home plans in question are for a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house with a great room — as common in Florida as mosquitoes. “There are only so many ways you can build a three-two with a great room,” Staine tells Coffee Talk. “It's a pretty ubiquitous model.”
Medallion officials disagreed. The firm filed the suit after a couple it worked with on building a potential home in The Hammocks, east of Interstate 75 at the end of Bee Ridge Road, decided to go with another builder. Medallion, court records show, contended that Tivoli and Start to Finish, through a reverse-engineering scheme, used Medallion's copyrighted Santa Maria model to build a home for the same couple.
U.S. Senate candidate Carlos Beruff, who will face off against Marco Rubio in the Republican primary later this month, founded and owns Medallion Home, which had $67.7 million in revenues last year. Beruff's office and the attorneys who filed the suit, Jesse Tilden and Michael Prohidney, of Tilden & Prohidney in Bradenton, didn't return several messages seeking comment on the lawsuit and rulings.
The couple that sought to build the home left Medallion when the homebuilder had issues obtaining approvals to build the Santa Maria model from The Hammocks architectural review committee. That's when the couple hired Tivoli, according to court filings. The owner of Tivoli, named in the lawsuit, is Sarasota entrepreneur Piero Rivolta.
The architectural review committee's denial of the Santa Maria model was one of several keys to Staine's defense. Medallion, for one, returned the construction deposit to the couple after its application was rejected, according to the defense response to the suit. So Medallion, Staine argues, was never going to build that home in that community, where the couple owned the lot.
On copyright infringement allegations, Staine, in court records, contends Medallion made “the general floor plan of its Santa Maria model available to the public by way of its promotional materials, including its website.” That, and the fact that many three-bedroom, two-bathroom designs are similar, says Staine, swayed the trial judge and federal appeals court to rule no copyright infringement took place.