I forgot to mention, that I was only addressing the topic of the architecture itself, and not ads or other separately identifiable artwork on the buildings.
I do know that if Mickey Mouse appears anywhere in your picture, there’s a likelihood that Disney will sue you. 
That is a false assumption. You can find umpteen “copyright notices” on sites with slavish copied and unaltered scans of Public Domain artwork saying “all scans copyright ME ME ME” and threatening dire consequences - and, in the US, they’re all false notices at best and fraudulent notices at worst (see Bridgeman v. Corel).
Everyone, NEVER assume that some dingus on a random website knows anything about the law. The Net is filled with the sites of people and even companies which print horrendously faulty legal information on them, and because they look pretty and official some people assume they are. Look at this thread, for example, on a Board “fighting ignorance” - how many posts did it take before someone actually linked to the law? And it’s not like the law was hard to find - it was the first God damn Google hit, I checked.
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In any event, Rusalka has the correct link and interpretation, ( http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#120 ).
See this note as well, regarding the artwork on buildings exemption: http://www.simkins.co.uk/ebulletins/archive/CTSuscopylimit.aspx
IANAL, but doesn’t copyright have something to do with context and publication? There’s a difference between an artist making a painting of a building and selling it versus publishing photographs of buildings in which the buildings themselves are the selling points. From the quote above it sounds like the building is merely part of the work, not its major content.
I know that as an artist I can do a painting of copyrighted material (such as a Coke bottle) and sell it - but there are strict limits on the number of prints I could legally make and sell.
I think you missed my point. I was only saying that if someone with the authority to give permission to use a photo of the building in a book does so, and signs a release form saying that he’s giving permission, he probably won’t sue once the book comes out.
Yes, it can be a pain to find the person with authority, and he may say no, or take months or years to get around to it, and if there’s no legal requirement to get permission, you may be able to avoid all that trouble. But if you just went ahead without permission, a big corporation whose lawyers don’t have enough to do this week could file a (possibly baseless) lawsuit, just to bully you. Whereas if you could show them the release, they would probably drop it right there.
WTF??? I’m calling bullshit on this. Provide a cite or clarify what you mean.
Well, I’m not deliberately bullshitting you. I’ll try to find a cite. This is something I researched 5 years ago when I was working for Coca-Cola and (perhaps from being surrounded by their marketing materials all day) did a number of paintings of Coke bottles. I brought one of them in to hang behind my desk & it got so much positive attention, I started wondering about making prints, only I didn’t want to be sued.
As to the OP there was a case in Federal court in Cleveland in 1999 where the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum sued a guy, Charles Gentile, for copyright infringement who took a bunch of photos of their fancy building to put in his book. Here’s a link to an article about it
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/bridge/Philosophy/murray.txt.htm
The case,* Rock and Roll HOF and Museum vs. Gentile, et al*, U.S. District Court, N.D. Ohio, Case No. 1:96-CV-000899, was decided in favor of Gentile on summary judgment. I don’t know the basis of the decision. I briefly searched if it was appealed but didn’t find anything, but I make no promises that it wasn’t.
OK, you’re arguing practicalities versus the letter of the law. I can accept that - I think we were answering the question from different angles. I do however feel that in this case the Case Law is very clear and that no lawyer would really try to sue unless they were indeed not behaving as honourable officers of the court. Which might very well be the case with some; every profession has bad apples…
If there is copyright protection, is it safe to assume it lapses like other copyrights? So buildings older than 75 (or however many years) would be in the public domain?
You might also need to be careful of anything else in the picture that might have commercial-use limitation. For example, to reaffirm a copyright on the Eiffel Tower they recently added a unique lighting display and copyrighted that. So, since it is impossible to take a picture of the Tower at night without also photographing the copyrighted lighting display, is is essentially impossible to use a night-photo fo the Tower for commercial purposes.
You know what they say: Ninety percent of lawyers give the other ten percent a bad name.
Anyone who has been around the financial district in New York City can attest that there are signs outside buildings (the NY Stock Exchange, for example) that say taking photographs is prohibited. I’ve seen similar signs inside the various buildings of the World Financial Center. This is obviously for security purposes in the post 9/11 environment, but I presume there is some legal basis for asserting this claim.
I’ve searched around, as I said I would, and of course cannot find the exact information I was drawing upon. I think it had something to do with freedom of speech versus diluting a trademark, with the idea being a single artistic work was not the same as employing a trademark for other purposes. In fact, Mickey Mouse was used extensively in one art exhibit challenging the issue.
Of course things may well have changed since I came to my previous conclusions.