Pirate Bay judge 'not biased', High Court rules

By Mats Lewan on 29 June 2009, 10:46am

The judge in the Pirate Bay case, Tomas Norström, was not biased. That's the decision of the Swedish High Court of Justice, which investigated accusations made by the four defendants in the high-profile file-sharing case.

The accusations were based on Norström's membership in organisations such as the Swedish Copyright Association, which counts among its members lawyers who represented the plaintiffs during the trial.

The court ascertained that such memberships do demonstrate a commitment to intellectual property issues, which could be considered by some to be in the interest of the plaintiffs. But it also pointed out that rights-holders' rights are protected by the Constitution, and so cannot be considered a conflict of interest if a judge endorses the principles behind copyright laws.

The court did say it would have been appropriate for the judge to disclose these memberships, which could have led to an investigation of potential conflicts of interest at an earlier stage in the process.

But as a whole, none of these circumstances are enough for sending the case back to the district court, according to the High Court, which now will look at the main appeal of the verdict.

On 17 April, the four defendants were found guilty of having made 33 copyright-protected files accessible for illegal file-sharing via the piratebay.org Web site and were sentenced to one year in jail.

They were also ordered to pay a total of 30 million Swedish kronor (£2.4m) in damages to copyright holders, among them a number of US media giants.