Port pilots clash over copyrights

The Rotterdam District Court (ECLI:NL:RBROT:2025:10807) issued a ruling last week in a dispute between two harbor pilots. One pilot accused the other of plagiarism. Claimant is providing a mandatory pilot course for Omani pilots in 2022 on behalf of IMCO (International Maritime College Oman). For this purpose, plaintiff has compiled a bookwork whose foreword plaintiff has written himself. This bookwork is entitled: ‘’Maneuvering ships on paper’’. The defendant is also in the sector of pilots, and has also worked in Oman. He was even the plaintiff's supervisor for some time. Defendant, when plaintiff returned to the Netherlands, also conducted a course for the IMCO. For that course, defendant used plaintiff's bookwork. He left the text unchanged. However, he did change the title to:‘’The theory of maneuvering ships’’. Furthermore, defendant slightly modified the preface and replaced the cover of the book with two photographs. Jim de Rouw is intellectual property lawyer and discusses the case.

Copyright infringement

The plaintiff claims that the defendant is infringing his copyrights and thereby acting unlawfully. His claims rest on two points:

1. copying the preface almost verbatim, with the defendant mentioning its own name instead of that of the plaintiff, according to the plaintiff this violates the personality right (Section 25 Aw);
2. and the unauthorized use and distribution of the bookwork to trainees, which harms plaintiff given his plans for commercial publication.

According to the court, it is established that the foreword, prepared by the plaintiff, is a ‘work’ within the meaning of the Copyright Act. Therefore, the preface is protected.

Preface to a book is a ‘work’ within the meaning of the Copyright Act

Since defendant copied large portions of the preface verbatim, there is a violation of article 25 Copyright Act. On top of that, he made only limited changes to the text. Moreover, under the preface the defendant has put his own name instead of that of the plaintiff. This not only creates the impression that the defendant is the author, but moreover appears that the plaintiff is not (anymore).

According to the judge, the latter is also a wrongful act, because the mentioning of one's own name under someone else's work is contrary to what is socially decent. Of this is also of importance that plaintiff and defendant were familiar with each other, and defendant could possibly have consulted with plaintiff, this could reasonably have been expected of him.

No copyright on the book work itself

However, the court is not convinced that plaintiff has copyright over the contents of the bookwork. This is partly because plaintiff did not show the entire bookwork to the court. Moreover, he himself stated that it consists of a collection of various texts. The court considered:

“The court is unable to form a proper picture of the bookwork in that situation. Furthermore, in view of the not immediately failing defenses, there is so much ambiguity about its contents that it cannot, certainly not without more, be assumed that [plaintiff] is the rightful owner of the entire book work (whether or not as a collector within the meaning of Section 5 Aw) and on that account can take action against infringers.”

The court added the following, according to the court. Even if it were to be assumed that plaintiff was the rightful owner of the book work, it would be necessary for the claims to be allowed that defendant infringed those rights. The court finds that there is no evidence of infringement by defendant. Indeed, the defendant was acting on behalf of the IMCO, which had been granted a perpetual license to the book work by the plaintiff.

Damages from copyright infringement

The plaintiff argued that he suffers damages due to the infringement of his copyrights. This is because the plagiarism would negatively affect the income to be realized with the book work. Indeed, plaintiff says he intends to exploit the book work commercially. The defendant disputes that. That defense by the defendant succeeds. According to the court, the bookwork consists largely of existing texts, including formulas, generally known principles and passages from other sources. In doing so, plaintiff has not sufficiently substantiated that he himself is the copyright holder or has permission from the original authors for use for commercial publication. Neither is it plausible that plaintiff has suffered any harm from any violation of his personality rights, because it is uncertain whether he would be allowed to publish the book commercially. The damage claim of plaintiff are for the most part rejected.

Despite dismissal of claims, defendant gets a firm slap on the wrist

Plaintiff's claims are therefore dismissed for the most part. However, this does not end the issue. When letters were sent to him, he responded to them ‘laconically. The judge therefore finds that the defendant owes the lawsuit to himself and orders him to pay the legal costs. These are not meager. He must reimburse over €8,000 in attorney's fees to the plaintiff:

“4.19 The claims are for the most part dismissed, but given [defendant's] dismissive and laconic response to the out-of-court letters, this procedure was necessary for [plaintiff] to have it established that putting [defendant's] name instead of [plaintiff's] name under the only marginally changed preface was not admissible. Therefore, [defendant] will be ordered to pay the costs, based on the indicative rate for a simple case (maximum €8,000).”

Copyright infringement lawyer

That is an extra reason to react adequately if you are sued for (alleged) copyright infringement. Because even if it later turns out to be unjustified, your attitude may result in you having to pay substantial litigation costs to your counterparty.