Question

The following passages discuss the application of copyright law to architectural works.

Passage A
Prior to the passage of the Architectural Works Copyright Protection Act (AWCPA) in 1990, the legal landscape in the United States offered minimal statutory protection for architectural designs. Under traditional doctrines, buildings were predominantly classified as "useful articles." Copyright protection was strictly extended only to those specific design elements that could exist entirely independently of the utilitarian aspects of the structure—a rigorous legal standard known as the separability test. For example, a purely decorative gargoyle affixed to a facade could be copyrighted, whereas the overarching structural blueprint or the innovative load-bearing walls could not. This historically restrictive posture changed significantly when the United States officially acceded to the Berne Convention, an international intellectual property treaty demanding that its member nations actively protect architectural works. Consequently, Congress enacted the AWCPA to protect the overall form, exterior design, and arrangement of interior spaces in a building, acknowledging for the first time that architecture possesses inherent artistic value independent of its functional utility. However, the resulting legislation carefully circumscribed this newly granted protection to maintain a balance of rights. To prevent architects from wielding undue, perpetual control over physical real estate, the Act explicitly permits the owners of constructed buildings to make significant alterations to, or even authorize the complete destruction of, their buildings without obtaining the original copyright holder's consent. Furthermore, standard features, such as common windows, standard doors, or basic, ubiquitous floor plans, remain entirely unprotected, ensuring that the fundamental vocabulary of construction remains readily available to all industry practitioners.

Passage B
The primary philosophical and legal difficulty in applying copyright law to the field of architecture stems directly from the discipline’s inherently utilitarian nature. Unlike a purely expressive medium such as a poem or a musical composition, a building must fundamentally serve practical, everyday purposes: it must safely shelter occupants, efficiently withstand diverse environmental stresses, and effectively facilitate specific human activities. For many decades, domestic legal frameworks across various countries hesitated to grant comprehensive copyright protection to architecture, harboring a legitimate fear that doing so would inadvertently grant dangerous monopolies over purely functional design solutions, thereby stifling vital urban development and technological progress in construction. However, sustained international harmonization efforts, most notably driven by the mandates of the Berne Convention, eventually forced many reluctant jurisdictions to formally recognize architectural designs as protected intellectual property.
When contemporary courts adjudicate complex architectural copyright infringement claims today, they must perform a highly delicate balancing act. Jurists heavily rely on the established idea-expression dichotomy, a foundational legal principle dictating that while specific, original artistic expressions are protected, the underlying functional ideas and basic concepts are not. Consequently, a plaintiff cannot successfully claim infringement merely because a competing architect utilized standard, ubiquitous design elements, such as generic structural pillars, conventional rooflines, or standard spatial configurations. Moreover, the intellectual property rights of the architect must always be weighed carefully against the tangible, physical property rights of the building owner. Legal statutes uniformly recognize that the individual or entity who purchases and inhabits a structure must retain the absolute autonomy to aggressively renovate or even demolish it as their spatial needs evolve, regardless of the original architect’s aesthetic vision, intent, or ongoing intellectual property claims.

Which one of the following details is explicitly affirmed by both Passage A and Passage B?