City says building plans can be viewed but not copied

Answer

As you may know, Health & Safety Code § 19850 provides that California’s city and county building departments must maintain an official copy of the plans of every building for which the department issued a building permit. Section 19851 provides that those copies must be open to inspection but: “may not be duplicated in whole or in part except

(1) with the written permission, … of the certified, licensed or registered professional or his or her successor, if any, who signed the original documents and the written permission of the original or current owner of the building, or, if the building is part of a common interest development, with the written permission of the board of directors or governing body of the association established to manage the common interest development, or

(2) by order of a proper court or upon the request of any state agency.”
The statute does not seem to tie the copying restrictions on the city’s approval of the plan, and the restrictions of the statute seem limited to the “official copy of the plans maintained by the building department of the city or county,” as required by § 19850.

Conceivably a city agency other than the building department could possess building plans that fall outside the scope of § 19851 because the architect was not obligated to provide them to the agency under § 19850.

In that case, there might have to be some other justification for refusing to permit copying of the records (or the records might be subject to disclosure). With the language of § 19851 in hand, it might be worth pushing back on the asserted connection between the ability to copy and the city’s approval of plans.

There appears to be virtually no authority construing § 19851. To the extent particular building plans are subject to copyright owned by the architect, however, there is some authority, outside the context of § 19851, permitting California agencies to refuse to provide copies of materials where the reproduction of such material would constitute copyright infringement. See 64 Ops. Cal. Atty. Gen. 186 (1981).

Although the legislative history of § 19851 is not readily available, that statute might be read as formalizing a procedure to avoid incurring copyright liability to the extent the government has mandated that architects’ works be deposited with a government agency.

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