A man has been ordered to pay €50,000 in damages for breach of copyright and unlawful competition.

Jurgen Neumann was found guilty of breaching copyright belonging to Yellow Pages (Malta) Ltd when he copied the company's work and put it in an online format as a digital soft copy. He was ordered to pay €35,000 in damages to the company.

He was also ordered to pay the company another €15,000 in damages for the unlawful competition carried out.

Yellow Pages (Malta) Ltd told the court that it produced and distributed the Yellow Pages locally and owned the copyright for this publication.

But defendants Jurgen Neumann, his son Sven, Samantha Statton and Hotelmedia Ltd, were operating two websites, www.yellowpagesmalta.com and www.whitepagesmalta.com in direct competition with the company as they were offering the same product.

According to the company, the two websites copied all the material published in Yellow Pages including mistakes purposely placed in the publication by the company to catch defendants out.

The company added that although the websites nominally belonged to Hotelmedia Ltd, they were controlled by Jurgen and Sven Neumann and Samantha Statton whose real name, the court realised, was Maria Dolores Buttigieg.

The court said that the case revolved upon the company's allegation that defendants had breached its copyright by reproducing what was published in Yellow Pages. It resulted from the evidence that Jurgen Neumann was responsible for the websites as his son, Sven, and his former social partner, Ms Statton, had minimal involvement in them.

In his judgement, Mr Justice Lino Farrugia Sacco upheld the company's request.

When Yellow Pages (Malta) Ltd had published Yellow Pages, the work was original in its format and its division into sections. Although the content of the publication was not protected by the laws of copyright, its general format was original and the copyright in it belonged to the company.