Architect Jeehoon Park has filed a lawsuit against Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), claiming the design of New York City’s One World Trade Center was stolen from a project he developed as a graduate student at the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1999.
The lawsuit states that the 104-story One World Trade bears a “striking similarity” to his 122-story “Cityfront ‘99” tower, which also featured a glass facade of inverted triangular planes.
The European parliament will vote today on an amendment to the EU’s copyright rules, which if passed would restrict Freedom of Panorama throughout the EU. This could result in thousands of building images being deleted from Wikipedia, and put restrictions on which photos people can upload and share online.
Freedom of Panorama is an exception to copyright rules, allowing photographs of public spaces and buildings to be used without restriction, while protecting the rights of the architect or artist. Currently some countries in the EU have full Freedom of Panorama, while other countries have it in place only for buildings or only for non-commercial uses -- or not in place at all.