Bob,
The last version of AIA (and hence our ASGCA) version had the architect retaining all copyrights. In the last few years, many lawyers for owners have tried hard to get the owner to have the copyright of a plan. Some states even want to retain the intellectual ideas, not just the plans. So, the agreements have changed a bit, when forced to, with architects giving away the copyright, when paid in full, but retaining the right to use the plans for marketing and elements of those plans on future projects. We also have to limit the clients use of any ideas to that project only, as there have been cases where an owner takes a detail for a retaining wall, for example, used it somewhere else without adapting the design to height or soils, and then when it fell down, actually suing the original gca for its failure.
In one case, an owner actually took the concept idea for a retaining wall from the free concept submitted by a losing architect, told the winner to put that in his design, and then when it fell, even sued the guy who only drew a line on a color rendering.
Very rare, but believe me, all of us recall those lawsuit disaster stories.
And, it's one of the reasons I sort of poo poo the plethora of young architects building things as if nothing could go wrong. It's all fun and games until an owner gets in a financial bind. We talked about passion on another thread, and I forgot to mention how much the first lawsuit kills the passion, or at least makes you more conservative, lol, not. Gca's can lobby all they want for the design benefits of doing it in house, but they can't get insurance for construction, nor can they change the world we live in. Mike talks about guys "playing architect" and it could be said that nearly every newb in the biz is doing that, until he realizes the legal responsibilities that go with the title.
And actually, over the years of a "standard" gca contract having ten pages of what we will do for the owner, and ten pages of what we won't, it sort of opened the ideas of other methods of practice. If contractor led, and with proper insurance and financial strength, those aspects get hiding under the general liability of the contractor, who takes responsibility for the entire thing more naturally, as their bonding/insurance companies are used to millions of dollars in contracts. The troubling part for gca's is, if you look at the design contracts for the design build institute of America, they really put all the responsibilities still on the gca, when in practice, the contractor controls things, using commercially available bridges, specifying the green sand on cost, not USGA, but asking us to "certify" that it is acceptable, etc.
Which leads me back to the old mantra of, "The owner owns, the designer designs, and the builder builds." When things go haywire, its better for the architect!