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The designer of the proposed garden bridge across the Thames, Thomas Heatherwick, has been caught up in a plagiarism row after New York based design studio claimed that the Heatherwick Studio design for the Olympic cauldron was almost identical to a design they submitted to the Olympic committee back in 2007.

Read Landscape Juice's article here: http://www.landscapejuice.com/2013/06/thomas-heatherwick-caught-up-in-plagiarism-row.html

Back in the late 1990's I submitted a design for a large terrace to a long-term client.

We had been employed for the previous seven years or so to cut grass and administer garden maintenance on an ad hoc basis.

A casual conversation with the client - I got on really well with lady of the house but always felt her husband was arrogant and standoffish - revealed that they were planning to remove the standard square patio they acquired when they bought the house and replace it with something much bigger with flowing lines and a softer feel.

I mentioned that we had a full construction arm to our company and suggested I came round with our portfolio and discussed ideas etc.

A subsequent meeting went well and I put over ideas of how I felt the patio (it was in the region of 200 square metres of proposed space) should look and how my design incorporated the existing desire lines and should flow around all the connected areas.

I did a rough sketch on site and went away to draw-up, to scale: not a full design, just a plan view as there were to be no steps or additional garden features.

I provided the drawing and my time free of charge as I felt that the client had been loyal for long enough to be fair to me: I was fairly comfortable that I'd get the work as long as I was sensible. I sent our quotation back with my drawing.

I heard nothing for a while but I wasn't worried because we were booked up and flat out with existing projects.

A few weeks later I was asked back for another meeting to discuss their project only to be given a full plan of the garden which incorporated my terrace design, exactly as I had done.

The words of the client were something like 'we got a professional designer in'.
Apparently our quote had come in too high so I was being asked where we could make savings'. Two other cpmpanies had been asked to quote based on my design.

I was astounded, gobsmacked and I felt let down and I told the client there and then that my design was my copyright. He didn't agree and said that he'd merely used my ideas to incorporated into a larger garden makeover. This was the first I'd heard about a full garden upgrade.

I wrote a letter immediately I got back to protest. and told the client that I considered the matter a breach of trust and that he had breached my copyright.

The client should have known better too as he owned a greetings card company. Copyright is a very important tool to any creative industry and he would have been well aware of the implications or what he had done.

Stupidly I accepted a payment of £100 for my time when I should really have made more of what had happened. I didn't work for the client again.

What would you do?

Have you ever been faced with the same problem or, if you haven't, how would you deal with it in a hypothetical situation?