French Couple Suing After Airbnb Copied Their Interior Design

I’m starting to think Airbnb is like that one friend we all had in college — the good-looking, ridiculously privileged kid who was always doing these outrageous, “aren’t you violating the social code?” things and then giving you this “what?” smirk that was simultaneously aware and disarming.

Today we have this story, from BuzzFeed:

Zoé de Las Cases and her husband, Benjamin Dewé, run a small interior design firm out of their apartment in Paris. […] In 2012, the couple say, Airbnb contacted them and asked if they could host a Paris office launch party in their home. The couple happily obliged. “We said great, we’re designers,” Dewé told BuzzFeed News. “We already used to rent our place for commercials.” The party was a success.

But a year later, something strange happened. A friend who was familiar with the couple’s Paris apartment congratulated them on their collaboration with Airbnb in San Francisco. He sent them pictures from a space in the company’s headquarters designed to look just like their apartment. The problem was, Dewé and de Las Cases knew nothing about it.

You’ll have to visit BuzzFeed for apartment pics (I want the chalkboard wall!) as well as pics of how Airbnb copied the design.

It turns out that this is one of Airbnb’s things, in that the company designs its office space to look like real-life Airbnb hosts’ homes, which is kind of weird when you think about it. (Just picture the good-looking college student with the “what?” smirk.)

So de Las Cases and Dewé have decided to sue Airbnb. You can’t copyright your home’s interior design in the US, but this couple is French, which is important. As BuzzFeed explains:

In France, though, it’s a different story; anything that is an original work can be covered by copyright, “even a tool, or even toilets,” according to [the couple’s lawyer Carole Soudri]. “It must be a reflection of the personality of its author,” she said. “This is exactly the case here. Zoe’s showroom and apartment is the true reflection of her personality.” It is for this reason, Soudri posits, that Airbnb doesn’t want the case tried in France.

Ooooooh I hope we get updates, is all I’m saying. (Also, I am totally motivated to get a chalkboard wall. But I will not steal the rest of your interior design, de Las Cases and Dewé!)

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