Intellectual Property (IP) is one of the most speculative areas of law. The rights of the author pose one intriguing question yet to be fully answered: what is an original work? In order to have property of a creation one must satisfy just a single criterion: to be original. There is no statute, no legal provision, no article that defines this crucial benchmark. And yet all depends on it! My research will answer this question as I will try to offer a definition of originality, drawing on an history of the idea in Western philosophy, that will be able to better explain the relationship between the expression of an idea and the personality of the author. In doing so I will narrow the scope of my exploration only to the architectural works because they offer, in great detail, the vast array of possibilities for protection and simultaneously the highest difficulty for IP that could be imagined. Apart from its own theoretical merits, my conclusions could serve as a doctrinal input for the judges that effectively serve justice in the national courts.

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