'Copycat cafe' to be demolished in landmark court ruling on architecture

A four-year-long copyright dispute surrounding the similarity of two coffee shops’ designs was ruled in favor of the original shop. Korea’s first-ever demolition order stemming from architectural plagiarism was ordered on the “copycat” coffee house.

The anterior view of Gijang Waveon, left, is compared to the anterior view of a cafe in Ulsan. [IDMM ARCHITECTS]

A four-year-long copyright dispute surrounding the similarity of two popular coffee shops’ designs was ruled in favor of the original shop Monday. Korea’s first-ever demolition order stemming from architectural plagiarism was ordered on the “copycat” coffee house.

Seoul Western District Court ordered the architecture firm of the replica coffee house to pay 50 million won ($37,800) to IDMM Architects, led by architect Kwak Hee-soo. The court also ordered the duplicate cafe to be torn down.

“It is unprecedented for the court to accept the demolition request because buildings, unlike books or music records, are difficult to dispose of,” said IDMM Architect’s attorney.

The case began in December 2019 when Kwak, the architect of the original coffee shop Gijang Waveon in Busan’s Gijang County, filed a damage suit against the architecture company and owner of a cafe in Ulsan, claiming that the Ulan coffee shop infringed upon Waveon’s copyright and violated the Unfair Competition Prevention Act

Kwak also demanded the cafe — known as “Waveon copy” on social media for its resemblance with Kwak’s building — be knocked down.

The interior view of Gijang Waveon, left, is compared with the interior view of a cafe in Ulsan. [IDMM ARCHITECTS]

Gijang Waveon and the cafe in Ulsan were similar in terms of their location and exterior design. Both were located on a seacoast and shaped with two concrete structures twisted on top of one another. Both had a total floor area of around 490 square meters (586 square yards) and stood 11-12 meters (36-39 feet) tall in a three-story building.

The two cafes also resembled one another in their interior design. They had stairs leading to an open space area between the ground floor and the third floor. Their roasting areas, furniture arrangements and balcony positions were similar as well.

“Creativity is granted for Waveon for its interior and exterior design that offers a view of the sea from all directions,” the court ruled. It found the interior concrete stair designs, U-shaped balcony and whole glasses at the buildings’ anterior alike.

In sentencing the demolition order, the court said it is impossible to only strip away the sections that are practically similar because the interior and exterior structures had contributed to Waveon’s creativity altogether.

The ground-floor view of Gijang Waveon, left, is compared to the ground-floor view of a cafe in Ulsan. [IDMM ARCHITECTS]

“This is a landmark decision that exemplifies how architectures should be dealt with in copyright laws,” Kwak said.

It conveyed a message that any architecture, despite how much it costs to build, could be knocked down for plagiarism, according to the architect.

Copyright disputes have been a long-standing brawl in the architecture industry due to the lack of clear standards on architectural copyrights and adequate compensation for the infringed.

A similar court ruling in 2020 ordered the owner of a coffee shop building in Sacheon, South Gyeongnam, to pay 5 million won to the owner of a cafe Terarosa in Gangneung, Gangwon, for imitating Terarosa’s designs.

“Previous building plagiarism cases have been settled at a level of financial compensation and a written apology but the [demolition] order will be a winning case that sounds the alarm,” said Chun Eui-young, head of the Korean Institute of Architects.

Gijang Waveon is an architecture that won the Prime Minister’s citation at the 2018 Korea Architecture Award and the World Architecture Award at the 24th World Architecture Community cycle the previous year.

Kwak is an award-winning architect himself, having taken home the Young Architect Award by the Korea Architects Institute in 2007, the gold prize for commercial architecture at the American Architecture Prize awards in 2016 and a total of four World Architecture Awards by the World Architecture Community.

BY HWANG EUI-YOUNG [sohn.dongjoo@joongang.co.kr]